No power...eeeek!

We had a power cut yesterday evening, hubby and I were sitting watching TV and the children were playing on the computer/Wii - when all of a sudden it went black - no electricity whatsoever.

Funnily enough I had plenty of candles to hand ;-) so those were quickly lit and a torch found to check under the stairs for the fuses - all looked fine.  We phoned an electrician friend who very kindly came straight over to check, seems that there was a main fuse gone at the local power station (but he also noted that our fuse box was very old and looked slightly iffy so would need changing very soon).

The power was off for about an hour or so, the children came and sat down with their books and little book lamps (they are little torches that clip onto the top of the book to light the pages) and we sat in semi darkness...waiting...

It was a strange experience and got me to thinking about how much we just rely on these things, everything in the house is powered by electricity, even the gas cooker and gas central heating won't work without the electricity.

Whilst we do as a household, spend a lot of time using computers of one kind or another (laptops, Kindles, Wii etc) we all read a lot of books too, and play board games as a family but even those require some kind of light to actually see what you are doing.

I can't even begin to imagine how people coped before electricity, no lights, no power, no heating (although the first house I lived in after leaving home had no central heating, it was a bit chilly but we managed we did at least have a log burning Aga to heat the water and keep one of the rooms warm!).

Candle light is lovely  but not really useful enough for reading or seeing anything, how to cook when the oven and hob don't work?  The thought of waking up with no electricity and not being able to have a shower concerned me greatly too!

We do take things very much for granted, it was a real 'aha' moment last night, to be thankful for those things that we have to make our lives easier (yes I know we pay for the electricity but after last night I was very happy to do so LOL).

Mother Nature is beautiful and I love to spend time outside, I love to sit and read or draw but I also love to sit and watch TV snuggled up with hubby, to have a film night with the children, to use my gas cooker to make lovely food on and to be able to step into the shower and with one flip of a switch have hot water...I am very thankful for all these things.