Power cut in Ramsgate

Yesterday afternoon at around 5:30pm I was watching Casino Royale on DVD and dinner was almost ready (free-range organic chicken!) when suddenly all the power went off. I put my head out of the front door to see if it was a powercut, but nearly everywhere else had lights, so I assumed it must be a simple case of a fuse tripping, but when I went to look at the fusebox under the stairs nothing had been tripped. I examined every fuse, but they were all intact and I was baffled.

The worse thing I could think of was that there must be something wrong and that I would have to call out an electrician as there wasn?t anything else I could do or think off. Bugger. Before I did that though I wanted to check with EDF (our electricity suppliers) to see if there was anything wrong with the supply, but I thought this was doubtful as how could all the other neighbouring houses be fine? I got through to an automated message which reported that there was a powercut in Ramsgate which occured around 6:10pm and most homes would have electricity back by 9pm. Hmmm?. I still wasn?t confident that this was the problem as the powercut was earlier that 6:10pm and no other houses I could see were effected, but it was too much of a coincidence and so I decided it would be best to wait until 9pm to see if the power came back, and if it didn?t then I?d just go to bed and wait until the morning to sort out an electrician which would hopefully be cheaper on a weekday than a Sunday evening.

The candles were lit, and I have to say it was very boring. No TV, no PC, no lights, what was I to do? I really am dependant on electricity. We had a knock on the door and some guys who live down the road asked if we?d lost power as they?d seen candles flickering and it turned out that their elderly neighbours, who are on EDF, had lost power too, and so all the pieces were fitting together. A waiting game now, and so I popped off to the local Budgens to buy a paper to read, and on the way back our neighbours across the road had just returned to find they had no power, and guess what, they were on EDF too.

Around 7:40pm, there was the familiar ping of the TV coming back to life and then all the lights came back on and a woohoo escaped from my lips! We have power! I was so happy. I put the cooker back on to reheat the veg, potatoes, and chicken (which had cooked but was just cold), and welcomed back civilisation.

I really did think that if there was a power cut then a whole grid would go out, but apparently individual houses can be knocked out too. I bet someone at EDF was bored and pressed ctrl-alt-del for a bit of fun. idiots.