when the electric goes out

[Stellata]

Power cuts are blah.

We've had 2 in 2 days.
The first one was overnight, but yesterday's was during the evening.

It's so fun, not, trying to type your home phone number into the keypad of your mobile because the automated power cut line askes you to, when the keypad's not lit up as it sleeps, and you can't see an effing thing, and you're trying to hold a torch at the same time..... [Our landline phone is electric dependent, and my old curly wire one was too deep under my bed to find by torchlight...]

And what do you do when you're on your own and there's no electric?! All I could do was text people, and do wordsearch puzzles, because the font was big enough to see by candlelight! Thankfully I have internet on my phone although it's somewhat limited, at least I could find the power cut number to call, and get text updates.

I hope we don't get any more. They are just tedious after a while. But, on the plus side, at least it was while the weather was warmer! If it'd been last week...

[mikey]

We used to have a lot of power cuts when I was a kid and we lived in west Africa. I used to love them! But I can understand that the novelty wears thin very quickly.

I can't really recommend what else you could do. You could invite friends round and play board games by candlelight - that's fun! Or read. Do knitting or something like that. Or just give in and have an early night

Here's hoping you don't have any more.

[Mandimoo]

that's why you're supposed to keep a 'curly wire' phone plugged in, what if there had been a fire and you couldn't find your mobile?

[Stellata]

I don't own the house/have control over what appliances are in use.

[Sefka]

Go looting!!

But yeah, I know how much power cuts suck, having been here during last summer's power crisis when we had no power between 5.30am and 6pm (this is in summer with serious heat + humidity.)

Whenever possible, we'd head to the pool. When that wasn't possible we'd just open all the windows and sit on the porch in our underwear (I lived in an all-girl house) and when it got dark it was either card games if we had candles, or story-telling if we didn't.

In a strange way it was nice, I never would've known that much about them and I never would've talked about myself that much, if we hadn't been in that sucky situation.

But evenings on your own... I think reading if you've got the light, otherwise making up stories in your head (which I find strangely fun) or just sleeping... it really is frightening how much we rely on electricity.

Good luck to you and Happy New Year!
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