Bang!

Flash!

"Mum-meee! Dad-deee!"

And with that ensued a mild panic on my part while I tried to remain calm, keep The Boy happy and safe, find the candles and work out why we had returned to the dark ages.

A power cut? But it's 2011, we don't have things like that anymore!

Apparently we do though. I looked outside the front door & everything was a sea of non-light. It was like Ron Weasley had been along with his de-illuminator. No light pollution and the faint high-pitched wails of burglar alarms protesting and being rendered incapable of doing their jobs.

Meanwhile inside, The Boy was quite enjoying this new game and hubby was in his boy scout element finding torches, plugging in the basic, non-electric phone and feeling all a bit 'me man, protect family'-ish.

Busy, busy, busy. Where are the candles? Who put the matches at the back of the only kitchen drawer which was wedged shut with pens and red Royal Mail elastic bands?

So I heated up The Boy's milk on the gas hob ('that's why we have a dual-fuel cooker' thought I smugly) and hubby took The Boy upstairs to get ready for bed, ably assisted by his super-duper Maglight.

I texted a few people and it transpired the whole of the 40,000 strong town was out. Well now this is serious! I know, I'll ask twitter for advice. Ah, no wireless. But aha, I have 3G! So I duly tweeted, and they ignored me. Pah!

A lovely automated phoneline from SWALEC informed me that it would be 10pm before the power would be back on.10pm?! But that's 3 whole hours away, what will we do? No 'net, no tv, no reading… and no I'm sorry don't even think about suggesting that! No wonder the Victorians had so many children.

"It's like the Blitz," says I to hubby.

He looked at me. You know that look. "Yes darling, but without the aeroplanes and bombing," says he.

He may have a point there, I'll concede that one.

So there I am, putting The Boy to bed in the pitch-black (don't worry, that's normal) when I hear the heating strike back up, the phone blip, the burglar alarms silence and normality return to the world.

Electricity, how I love thee.