Just had a text from Barry to say he has no electricity. He assures me he's paid the bill, but someone has apparently burned down the local substation.

If anyone is awaiting a response from PM or e-mail, he'll get back to you as soon as possible.

Oh dear :-(

someone... okay, own up, who did it?

OK, Lowersinth, plug the washing machine in again, but this time, stand on the rubber matting. That way your hair won't go so curly

Lowersinth: OK, here goes!

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZAP!

*Lowersinth flies through the window*

You shouldn't be able to do that! You're a mortal!

Lowersinth (from outside): 'strewth that hurt!

Well it looks as though its not going to work. We'll just have to wash the cat by hand.

Fido!

Fido!

Oh gosh. Is he ok?! Has he got somewhere warm to stay?

Basically large swathes of Bexleyheath, Dartford and the surrounding area are without power. My sister is still powerless Barry is not that far from me (5 minutes drive) so he must be one of the unlucky lot that still haven't had power restored...

My sister has a young baby so is having to go and stay at her mother in law's tonight - LBC were saying some of this may take up to 2 days to fix!

Miss Ross: It's not that cold fortunately so I'd hope he'd be OK

Bad luck Barry!

Solari is right - it's not so cold here, I'm only a few miles away from Baz, so I think he'll be ok.

Why don't you take him out for dinner!

Perhaps I should go pick him up and bring him back here for his forum fix before he goes cold turkey

He's well fed by the sounds of it so don't worry, he's fine - getting an early night too It's quite obvious that there are widespread power issues... driving back from my sister's there were massive queues outside the takeaways (don't people have gas cookers anymore? )

That's a good idea! I am taking him out to lunch tomorrow, but then he is going to buy me help me choose a new flute

If the trains are still running....

Don't worry, he managed to get on the forum before we had lunch today.

Power is restored to Barry-Clari Manor

Hooray!

click here

Thanks for the thread DC, and the various texts. Power is hopefully restored...

Update..Barry was switched off again at 9 this morning. Not likely to be back for 36 hours or so...

I found that out myself, went to the Doctor's and everything was off..

It's a good job this hasn't happened in the middle of winter.. and if they catch the vandals who did this, they should be hung, drawn and quartered made an example of.

Heads on spikes?

Sorry I couldn't make it on Saturday by the way - hope it all went well!

I woke up to the news that "Large parts of SE London are without power today" and immediately started thinking "Oh, I hope that's not me", then realised that the radio is mains powered....

Seems I'm close enough to Central London to be fed by a different substation.

I got a text from my Piano Teacher last night, cancelling my lesson as the power was still out up there... This had the undesirable side-effect of me heading to the pub for a bit

If businesses can't trade for a couple of days because of this, do they get compensation from their energy supplier or is there some other form of insurance they'd have to cover it?

I keep having this irresistible urge to add after reading 'barry-clari is powerless'.

I was going to post something along those lines... with a picture of a criminal mastermind

I have an awful headache though and can't be bothered to put in the effort....

It went very well thank you.
See you at another one some time.
Hope the hangover headache is soon better.

I've got my 90 minute ration of electricity...

Thanks for the support. To add to my woe, my mobile phone has also broken, so I won't be contactable there for a while either...

Well, you could get a new one

Edit: Not that you'd be able to charge it. D'oh

Maybe you can get a wind up rechargerer thingy?

Barry and I were in London together yesterday and after reading the news about his power cuts, I have challenged him to get his name and picture into the London Evening Standard .

Stop Press!

Police caught the vandals responsible for the major power cuts, and magistrates sentenced them to the electric chair............. oh dear, it isn't working

Hope you get the power back soon Barry!

Failed on the newspaper count gedall

Power is returned to normal now

Thanks for the support everyone

Thanks!

Is it just me, or does the "5 hours of being conducted by me " in your signature sound rather like a threat...

It will be a great day. Lots of fun will be had.

And lots of s will be said by the conductor.

(it's on October 3rd, 12noon-5:30pm, by the way : come and play music everyone )

I have no doubt of that
Just my usual inability to post in a serious manner...

I've missed that the last few days...

Candles do lose their charm after 3 nights of them...

Glad you're back to normal with electrics Barry. I've just had a whole day without electricity while the technicans rewired all the cables (13 hours without power that was).

Car Expert

I think there must be an electricity flu pandemic going around. Last week ours was off for 8 hours, then went on and off the next day 12 times in all. So they came and dug the road up, went away for a week, then came back and filled in the hole. Seems to be OK now though, so I hope all is well with everyone else's power.

Ours was planned in advance though, although it was something that should've been done ages ago

Car Expert