The Dark Room

My newest Kindle related purchase last night proved itself to be completely worth the 99p I spent at Tesco. I’d been looking at the clip on lights on amazon which were about £14, then in the bargain household section of my local store they had pretty much the same thing for the bargain price of less than a pound.
Since buying it I hadn’t actually used the light. Luckily there is usually electricity in pretty much all the places I travel. However last night we had a power cut!
Now obviously down my way this was not something that the neighbours would let pass by. There had been earlier power related incidents apparently, so I was reliably informed by Hilda1 as soon as I arrived home. According to her though, normal service had been resumed and everything was ok again now.
However a disaster that not even the Hilda’s could predict happened a few hours later – the power went off again! My initial thought admittedly was that I’d somehow blown the microwave up which had shorted the whole house. However luckily the spirit of the blitz lives on and it became obvious it was the whole street when first out of her front door came Hilda2 charging up the road to where the power company was working on the earlier problem.
She was quickly followed into the street by Mrs Pyjamas from next door (in her pyjamas as always) and Mother Hubbard in the corner. Obviously as it had gone 6.30 Hilda1 was in bed asleep (she has to be up for 5am of course, the perils of retirement) but there was slight concern as to the whereabouts of the Howards and Drinks alot Lady from over the road.
Luckily Hilda2 got straight to the route of the problem. She returned up the road to inform us all that the power would be out for the next 4 hours but she’d sent baby Hilda up the road to buy some candles. Turns out the Howards houses had been the cause of the power cut in the first place so sensibly they had gone out. Drinks alot Lady hadn’t noticed anything had happened.
A few glasses of wine and a takeaway pizza with a friend (dinner was postponed due to lack of electricity to cook) was fun by candlelight, but once she’d left the lack of tv was quite daunting. However, even scarier was the prospect of having to go to bed without being able to read…until I remembered my 99p purchase.
Now as mentioned before the kindle is for travel reading, and real books are for home reading but that’s the joy of the light. Off to bed I went with my 99p light attached to the top of my book…happy days. Luckily this morning the power had been restored, but I may go and stock up on my clip on lights just in case.