I woke early this morning with the idea that there’d been a knock at the door. I had been having an ace dream, involving timbales, a lathe, and possibly other exciting elements. I dunno, I was asleep. But then I wasn’t asleep, I was blearily peering out of my upstairs window to find who had knocked at my door.

Nobody. I went back to bed.

Later I rose at a more respectable hour, though still before my alarm, and dreamily schemed about breakfast and dressing … but the bathroom light didn’t. Light, that is. I tried the landing light, the bedroom light… nothing. I checked the fusebox and the master switch was on. I checked the meter and there was a “DO NOT TAMPER” seal stuck across it. I didn’t know whether it had always been there or whether I’d been cut off. I dimly recalled getting a lot of documents from London Energy that seemed a bit complicated so got put on piles, then the piles got tidied away etc…

I was proud of myself for realising it would be best to find the papers while it was still light. I was still going through paperwork when I remembered the 9:30 telephone meeting at work so I packed my shampoo and a towel and dashed to the office. Fortunately I managed to shower before the phonecall as I think they might have smelled me even from India.

After the phone call I found the London Energy documents on my desk. There was a bill addressed to “the occupier” and dated March. I phoned the number and said cryptic things to the robot at the other end until it passed me to a human, a good-humoured Geordie or Mackam (sorry I really can’t tell the difference by accent) who seemed genuinely embarrassed to have to read out the boilerplate script parts of the conversation. He said no they haven’t cut me off, they don’t generally do that sort of thing. I said while I was there on the phone I might at well pay the bill and set up direct debits.

I said I’d seen some guys with a digger on the street corner and they might have put a spade through the wire, and at least it had given me a wakeup call to phone them! He said he should suggest that to the bosses, send round a guy to “accidentally” cut the wire. Maybe he’d get a prize…

So the long and short of it is, yes I owed the electric money, no they hadn’t cut me off, but I still don’t know whether I have got electricity. The hot water is on Gas but depends somewhat on the electricity to light it.