The pure, floundering, heart-stopping horror of a power-cut | Jack Marshall’s column

A telling barometer of how reliant we are on our gadgets is the fact that, when every single one of them is extinguished with a perfunctory click, it’s seriously startling. With a sound like a heavy pillow dropped onto a hardwood floor, the house went from a living, breathing hive of volts and surges to silence.

With just two suddenly-feeble-looking candles flickering tamely, everything took on a decidedly more Victorian tinge. I felt a strong primal urge to don a nightgown and a nightcap with a long ostentatious bobble to read a hardback in a high-backed chair.

My phone! Oh god, my phone. It runs on electricity, and heaven only knows when that will be back. What percentage am I on? Please, god, don’t tell me I’ve forgotten to charge it. What will I do? What will I scroll through and stare at? What will I look at while the TV is on? Wait, the TV isn’t on either. But what will I have on in the background?

Tea. Times like this call for tea. Ah, I can’t boil the kettle. No tea for me, then. Wait, didn’t kettles use to work on the hob? Screaming with steam until you saw to them like a wailing baby? You know, back in the olden days? I could use a trusty pan. Old school. Here we go - pan filled, onto the hob it goes. Wait. The hob’s electric.

I ring my dad, who lives nearby. He’s not got a power cut, and starts gloating about how much extra electricity they have. I put the phone down, careful to preserve my precious battery - a neighbour might try to attack me for it before long. Thoughts turn to cold porridge and meals of what I can only imagine will be roadkill from here on in.

Then, after 15 minutes, the lights come back on. I put my phone on charge.