Power Cut

Thursday, 14 August 2008

At 5+ this morning, I though I heard a loud bang. Must be the thunder. Then I realized that it was a power failure. The whole street was plunged into darkness. No lights no problem, we’ve torch and candles. But no heating!!! The temperature in the house gradually dipped to 18degrees. The kids were still sleeping so they just carried on with another thick blanket. But poor mummy, making breakfast and packing lunchboxes, with the candle light and in the cold.

Papa and Mummy just pace the house, peeping out but can’t see much.

Quite an exciting morning, although we didn’t know what was going on? No TV, no computer. We heard the police siren, helicopters hovering above our house. Huge trucks appeared on our street soon. And by then, with daylight, we could see them.

On the way to school, we saw that a pillar holding the cables had tilted to one side. One of the cables had apparently snapped. We learnt later that a trunk had rammed into it…Sleepy reckless driver.

It took the whole day for the pillar to be put in place. The street was closed up to 8pm. So after school, there were kids riding their bicycles and scooters up and down. I asked my kids to go out too but they thought it was too cold to go.

Today, we not only had our lovely crossing supervisors, we also had many policemen helping us across the roads to and from school.

The power came back at 8.10am. Thank God. 2 hour plus of power cut is more than we can take. The last time there was a power cut at Boxhill, some houses didn’t have power for a week. But that was in March. Still can survive without heating. Not now.