Friday was not a fun-day.
Just before lunch on Friday the world went dark.
And very, very quiet as all the machinery became silent.
Five minutes later and still in the dark time to find out what's going on. The old analogue phone is retrieved from the cupboard and plugged in (the mobile phone mast shuts down when the power does), the village phone book has the power company emergency contact number who tell us that it's a wide spread area fault and we'll be without power until 1.30. Oh, well it's lunch time so a slightly longer than usual lunch hour and we'll be fine.
Our battery backups allow a quick tweet.
After lunch sitting by the wood stove and we're thinking about breaking out the board games, 1.30 comes and goes and still no power so we phone again - the company is totally nonplussed that they can't text us updates and we can't check their twitter feed but are actually very good and promise to phone us back on a landline with updates which they do, re-connection will now be at 2pm. We decide to use our time profitably and settle down to old fashioned proper paper work. Two o'clock and the lights spring back on ..... and go off again, on, then finally off. Another phone call to the power network office, again they'll phone us back and just before half past two they do, 361 properties (Goathland and surrounding farms) are affected by a major network fault which translates as no power until 7pm - argh. And it's a Friday.
Our backup systems will run basic equipment but not enough or long enough to put together a Weekly edition. However, the village down the hill where sub-ed TB lives has power so we pack up laptops, pick up paperwork, flash drives, our office network storage box and decamp to take over her house and set up shop on the dining table.
We manage to get most things done, few people notice (phew), just after five a phone call tells us the power is back - hooray. Time to finish up what we're doing and head back up the hill to print and dispatch the newsletter. It was a very late night.
All of which means we can still say "CJS has never missed a deadline"!
And very, very quiet as all the machinery became silent.
Five minutes later and still in the dark time to find out what's going on. The old analogue phone is retrieved from the cupboard and plugged in (the mobile phone mast shuts down when the power does), the village phone book has the power company emergency contact number who tell us that it's a wide spread area fault and we'll be without power until 1.30. Oh, well it's lunch time so a slightly longer than usual lunch hour and we'll be fine.
Our battery backups allow a quick tweet.
After lunch sitting by the wood stove and we're thinking about breaking out the board games, 1.30 comes and goes and still no power so we phone again - the company is totally nonplussed that they can't text us updates and we can't check their twitter feed but are actually very good and promise to phone us back on a landline with updates which they do, re-connection will now be at 2pm. We decide to use our time profitably and settle down to old fashioned proper paper work. Two o'clock and the lights spring back on ..... and go off again, on, then finally off. Another phone call to the power network office, again they'll phone us back and just before half past two they do, 361 properties (Goathland and surrounding farms) are affected by a major network fault which translates as no power until 7pm - argh. And it's a Friday.
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| no power tweets |
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| CJS Emergency office |
All of which means we can still say "CJS has never missed a deadline"!