On Saturday my wife and I got the rare pleasure of some time to ourselves. We took a walk around town and browsed the local market stalls, purchased some fresh fruit. There were some French market stalls we took a look at, the food looked lovely, bread and cheeses but as we're on the GI diet we couldn't buy any of it, such a shame.
Later on we were in a newsagent and I was about to buy a newspaper for me and a couple of pens for my wife when the power went off. The whole town was affected, unfortunately the cash registers went offline so nobody who was queueing could pay for their goods unless they had the correct change. The worst thing was the doors of the newsagent were electrically controlled so we were stuck inside for a few minutes until one of the bigger blokes at the front worked out how to get them open manually in an emergency - really just a case of pushing hard in a particular spot.
When we got outside the whole town centre was practically just walking around. Some of the market stalls weren't affected, the ones who needed generators had them anyway.
My wife took a call from my daughter who said the power had gone off at home too. We looked at each other, my phone signal wasn't on. I wondered for a minute or two if England had been hit by some kind of EMP bomb and the start of World War 3?
Eventually the power came back on. And everybody went back to their normal Saturday activities. At least it was only 10 minutes and we weren't in a lift! That would have been awful.
3 comments:
Isn't it funny how our minds will go to the worst case scenario? We have all these procedures in place for losing power at work. At home though, I get more nervous!
When we had a huge blackout about five or six years ago, someone thought we had been attacked. Nope, just one of those things, and power was restored soon after, but I can't remember how long it took.
I remember a group of us having a little power-outtage party in the front yard with wine and appetizers someone whipped together.
LB: Yes there is a tendency to pause and wonder what's the worst it could be - I don't know why we do that!
Tara: Wow, that sounds like it was a little bit special. I like it when something like that brings down barriers and produces such a social reaction out of everybody.
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