This morning I woke to a complete blackout.

No power at all.

The kids couldn’t cook toast.

My espresso machine was useless.

My wife had to boil water in a saucepan on the gas stove to have her cup of tea.

It wasn’t just us, either. The entire street was without electricity. Turns out something happened in an underground pipe and took out a few streets around us.

Apparently, it could have been a pipe under our house. One that we would have needed to pay to get fixed.

It wasn’t, though. Fortunately.

It was the first time in 16 years we’ve ever had to deal with anything like that.

But also a reminder of how lucky we are.

One serious, unexplained blackout in 16 years isn’t something you can really complain about.

I also can’t fault the response: I received a text message at 6am from the electricity wholesaler acknowledging the blackout and informing me they were investigating. Power was back by about 8:30am.

And now I’m writing about it on my laptop through my home Wi-Fi like nothing ever happened.

As I said: Lucky.