... so then... the blog vanished off the face of the earth for a whole day! Eeeek.... sorry guys! That would be something to do with a router at our ADSL provider's end dieing and them having issues finding a replacement. Not to worry... we're back now!
Yeah, you might call me crazy that I think the Internet is a utility, but I bet they thought the same thing when they used to put electricity in people's homes... I digress...
So, what other utility cuts have there been recently...
Well last night I went to the pub early to celebrate Keith's mad journey to India and Thailand for 5 weeks. It was a sort of wish him well on his way sort of thing... well not long after I had I got my first pint, the lights went off! We at first assumed that one of the trips had tripped... (because the music was still playing) so started looking for it. Then we realised people coming out of houses across the road... it was a power cut, but not on all phases.
After about 30 mins I'd eventually found (well got Chris to find) the number to call up the electricty people and let them know about the outage... bloody pub phone wouldn't let me dial 0800 numbers, so I had to go to the Chippy across the road (which wasn't blacked out... although the flat above was). They let me borrow the phone and I was soon informed that there was 180 properties affected and it'd be about 2 hours...
After about 30 minutes the lights came on... wooo.... then a fire engine pulled up outside the cob shop... strange. We were a tad worried it was our fault... seeing as the fire alarm was still bleating claiming it had no mains... odd. After checking around to see if anything was tripped I decided that maybe we'd lost two phases and only one had come back...
I went back to the Chippy to call up the people and ask them what was going on.
Indeed both blue and yellow (yup... they told me in old colours) were nadgered and the problem was still on going. They also informed me that they'd had a report of a gas leak... so that explains the fire engine then!
Then all the lights went dead, and the music stopped, and the Chippy went dead... yup, they'd pulled the plug on all of the phases. Whooop... By now the pub's getting a tad cold 'cause the heating isn't working.
Good job the beer is powered by gas! So we could all still drink... bit of a pain taking money though... what with the tills being dead and all. At some point the Red Cross turned up to dish out cups of tea to all the people stood around watching Transco dig up the road.
I'd had nothing to eat, as I'd planned on getting something from the Chippy with Keith... the chippy was well and truely closed now though!
So that's that. Quite an interesting night. Power was fully restored at 8.10am this morning apparantly. Luckily where I live wasn't effected :-)