Powerless

It's Sunday afternoon afternoon and we are having a power-cut. I have no power at all, except for things like the laptop and other mobile devices. So at least I can still type! I just won't be able to publish this until later. Hopefully not too much later.

It happened just literally 30 seconds after I'd started playing the new Star Wars KOTOR game on the Xbox. It had just got past the various Lucasfilm and other company logos and started the introduction, then zzzzziiiiiipppppp and it all went dark. A burglar alarm started off outside somewhere as I believe there is a legal requirement for at least one alarm to go off whenever the power goes.

It did occur to me soon after we lost power that this could be the result of a terrorist attack, or nuclear strike or Flash Gordon style Moon Crashing Into Earth scenario, and I'd never know the details because I have lost the internet (and am too lazy to plug in my dial-up connection), I have lost the radio (and have only just remembered I have a battery powered one in the bathroom) and I didn't buy a newspaper in the supermarket this morning. That might at least have had a warning in it. Since there doesn't seem to have been any blinding super hot flash of light come this way in the past few minutes, I think I'll rule out nuclear strike as an option.

So now I need to occupy myself without electricity (and without cups of tea!) for however long this takes. So far I have done the following things:
- Experimented with my own burglar alarm to see if it still works during a power cut. It does.
- Written a birthday card and its envelope.
- Written this.
- Paired a pile of socks and put them and some other bits of washing away.
- Tidied some wires by the television. Slightly.

The electricity's just come back on now. The outside burglar alarm had stopped a short while ago, but the sudden advent of power seems to have started it off again. Darn.

And now I'll have to spend the best part of a day resetting a million clocks around the flat. Darn again.