A few weeks ago, we had a power cut early in the morning. I was just waking up, still in bed. I realised the security floodlight was off outside. Since we moved in, it has been on all night every night. The first night I hated it — what feels like one million lumens lighting up the path and the woods behind our house, and of course, because of its placement on the gable wall, also our bedroom. Every single night, from sundown to just past sunrise. But I got used to it quickly and felt somehow safer because of it. Now, it was oddly dark.
I heard the pipes hissing as the radiators began to cool, and I realised that our beloved gas central heating system was also out. With an electronic timer, no power also means no heating and no hot water — what a lesson.
And, of course, the Wi-Fi was out as well. Because we live in the middle of nowhere, I don’t get phone signal in the house. The nearest 3G coverage is on the lochside, a quarter of a kilometre away. So in a single moment, we lost power, heat, internet, and phones. In the depths of winter, half a kilometre down a private track, we were also snowed in. In lockdown, we hadn’t had any reason to dig out the van from the drive since the last snowfall — there was nowhere to go. Even if there was, we wouldn’t be making a dash for civilisation today.