Darkness falls

Isn't it always the way that when you're at your very busiest, when the very slightest distraction could throw your well-laid plans into disarray, when the smallest sneeze could send the Earth spiralling off its axis and plunging into the fiery depths of the sun, that something *always* goes wrong.

And so it was this morning, as I laughed in the face my deadlines while racing to complete two issues before taking next week off, that there was a mysterious whine and all of a sudden the office was plunged into utter and complete darkness.

Ooo! I thought. Was this the initial stage of an alien invasion, or some natural disaster? I've seen Hollywood movies; natural disasters are just an excuse for awesome dudes like me to save the day. It was kind of like 'The Towering Inferno', except my office isn't in a tower and there wasn't an inferno. Unfortunately it quickly became apparent that as our neighbours' power was still on it was just the result of some shabby electrical thingy. Nevertheless, it's quite startling what a bit of power outage can do. The food situation was foremost on ours minds; would we have to start eating the weaker members of staff before help arrived? The ol' blitz spirit soon kicked in, however, and someone mentioned about popping out to get bacon sandwiches. That soon put an end to the murderous glances that had been spreading like wildfire. Eyes off the thighs, people!

The mere act of loosing power does kind of leave you feeling pretty helpless, though. I think everyone, at some point, said something along the lines of "I can go work at home. I just need to email some files to myse- oh." So we stood there in darkness. The whole thing reminded me of that bit in Star Trek, episode number 003: 'The Corbomite Maneuver' when the Enterprise is left adrift in space, and Kirk has to threaten to blow it up in order to save the day. I suggested we should blow the office up, but no one seemed too keen on the idea, so I just stood around for a while ready to fireman's lift anyone out of the danger zone if they needed it. Most people were quite happy just to use the door though.

Eventually, with main engineering unable to give me a repair estimate on the warp dri- er, I mean with the electrickery still off, I decided to head down to Starbucks to do some proof-reading; at least there it would be warm, well-lit, and with a ready supply of hot beverages.

An hour or so later I wandered back to the office, which was still listing helplessly in space. But in short order a bloke from the electrickery board turned up and set to work. I thought about offering him a drink, but obviously our facilities were greatly impaired. Neither cold coffee nor the offer of a teabag to suck on sounded particularly inviting in my mind, so I just left him alone to get on with the job. Twenty minutes later main power was restored and, bugger it, I had to crack my knuckles and get back to work. A horrifically burnt-through piece of cabling was revealed to be the villain of this particular piece, I might add. But we vanquished it, we totally did!

Rawr!