It was a bit of an exciting morning here today. I’d planned to get up at 0620am… no problem, managed that fine. Stepped into the shower and was enjoying that for about 2 mins, fully lathered up from head to toe and bang, out goes the power. We have a power shower, which, as the name suggests requires power to operate. When the power goes out, so doe the shower. Bugger.. now what. Right, off to the bath tub to get the soap and stuff off me, at least the water under mains pressure works.
First things first, call the power company to find out what’s up (or rather down). The automated recording informs me that Cambridge Central, Cambridge North and about a dozen large villages, including our own are all affected by the outage. No further details about what that is. The recording informs me the ETA for power being restored is 0915.
Right, that’s not gonna fly. I’m working from home today and on the early shift, I need power. Out to the garage, drag out the generator and run a line into the house. Into this I plug everything in the office into and my laptop. Now I have computers and Internet again. My world is nearly restored to normal. I get online only to find out the entire planet fell to bits while I was sleeping and my colleagues have handed over about 15 tickets for me to work on. On top of that I have to watch the kids, get them ready for school and take them to school. Yuki had to go to London this morning for something.
The power came back about 0715ish, but I’m not foolish enough to trust that, I just ignore the lights that are on and continue working off the generator, sure enough about 30 seconds later out it goes again, then it’s back, gone, back, gone, back, rinse and repeat that process several more times over 2-3 mins (if only I could have been so lucky to rinse and repeat in the shower this morning).
Eventually the power comes back about 0830. Again, I’m not trusting it. I get the kids off to the school and get back about 0915 and the power is still on, ok I’ll trust it now 🙂 Get the generator all packed up and cords returned to their storage places ready for the next time. I was a bit nervous, Yuki had come home and forgot to fill her car up the other day. The computer onboard said only 10 miles left in the tank, the closest reasonable station is 7 miles. Not wanting to having to rescue her from the side of the road I tip the contents of my 5L petrol can into her car for her, that left me with only what was left in the generator if it was needed. Had the power been out another 90 mins or so the generator might not have lasted on what was in it.
Lessons learned and things to do today
– Buy more petrol and fill the generator up
– refill petrol cans for emergencies
– Look into how much it will cost to get a proper generator to house fitting installed (if possible here)
What a morning..
