Friday 9 January 2009

Day 101 of 365: How Am I Supposed to Breathe With No Air Power?


Right in the middle of washing my hair today, the shower stopped (they're electric here). Then everything else in the flat got quiet. I quickly grabbed a towel and went to see what was going on. Matt informed me that we just had a power cut and he was going to see if any of the other neighbours were affected. When he got back, he used my mobile to ring Scottish Power and see what the problem was. We knew it wasn't that we hadn't paid a bill because 1) we just signed on with Scottish Power, and 2) in order to disconnect you they have to physically enter your property to do it -- unlike the backwards people at City of Laurinburg who cut you off if you don't pay within 10 days of the bill being issued. We even wondered by this point if it had something to do with the gas alliance being in the area and maybe they had to do an emergency shut off.

Scottish Power said it could be up to 3 hours for a technician to get to us, so we sat there in complete silence. With no Internet, I worked on a crossword for a bit. Matt was about to turn on the telly right before it happened, so there went his plans. It really makes you appreciate the convenience of everything because there was literally nothing to do. I even made an attempt to create our own entertainment with a funny, mad-libs-type word game I used to play with friends at Uni.

When our downstairs neighbour got home, Matt went to find out if he had power and he didn't. About 20 minutes later a red van shows up and we eventually discover the reason for the outage. The fuse in our neighbour's flat downstairs had blown and knocked out our power as well. (Thanks, neighbour!) Everything was fixed shortly thereafter and we resumed our normal lives. *phew!*

3 comments:

Brianne said...

Did you manage to rinse the soap from your hair before it cut out?

My electricity went out once when I was cooking a nice dinner for some friends a few years ago. It was completely ruined.

Meg said...

I had just put the conditioner in, so I had to rinse in ICE COLD water from the sink.

The New Mrs. C said...

Yipes....rinsing in ice cold water is the pits...but they say it makes your hair shinier.

Glad the power is back up and running though!