Blackout

By C. P. Clarke

The living are in hiding, and the dead are just existing.

There has to be more to life.

There has to be more than this.

 

The power has gone out in London. No one knows why. No one knows when it will come back on.
In the darkness and the panic, a new virus spreads through the community, and with it comes fear. Not just of dying, but of surviving.

One man is left alone. Terrified. Losing hope. Longing for the lights to come back on.

Trying to protect his family, he forms unlikely alliances with neighbours he's never spoken to as they form a new community. Trying to understand what has happened to the infrastructure of the country, they feel abandoned, without direction, without power. Soon they realise that it is not just the lights they rely on for electricity.

And then the virus strikes.

Soon, it is not just the looters and Raiders they are afraid of, but each other, as the infection begins to spread.

As the circle of people around him shrinks, its his sanity that becomes his biggest demon.

• Language: English
• Publisher: C. P. Clarke
• Release date: Mar 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9798649556705

Book preview

C. P. CLARKE

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious.  Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Text copyright©2019 C.P. Clarke

All rights reserved.

Cover design by: C. P. Clarke

ISBN: 9798649556705

Imprint: Independently published

Other titles by the author:

Life In Shadows

Stalking The Daylight

The Killing

Vicky Rivers

Furi’on

Time Locked

POV - Volumes 1 – 3

Samuel

War Child Trilogy

A Question of Faith

Stories on a Wall

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Author’s note:

I’ve been sitting on this story for years, how many I can’t remember.  I wrote a short story called ‘The End’ some thirty years ago, and since then this book has been wanting to be written.

I’ve always been fascinated by the post-apocalyptic genre and its ability to make you examine the inner character of a person.  Strip away the societal mask that we hide behind and see what really makes a person tick.  We hide behind money and power, jobs and security, family and friends, hobbies and entertainment, community and faith.  Strip all that away and what is left of the person?  How do we survive in a world alone without the things that define us?

It’s these questions that draw me to this particular genre, the survivalist mentality, the fracturing of a character who’d previously thought he or she was something they’re not.  How and why does one keep going when there seems no purpose to continue?

I have watched and read many post-apocalyptic stories over the years, some good, some bad, some absolutely amazing, some absolutely atrocious.  In all you’ll find that underlining character break out when the normal is stripped away.  The hero becomes the villain.  The villain becomes the hero.  The average sometimes excels beyond everyone’s expectations.  I would like to think that we all would rise to our best, however experience and observation has taught me otherwise, and I sadly realise the extremes of some of these stories may not be far off the truth.

There is no end to versions of end times that can be told, simply due to the endless possibilities of an individual’s desire to survive.  That’s 8 billion stories worldwide, or up to 9 million in London, where this story is set.

So many times I have almost given up on writing this story as I came across similar tales of survival, thinking to myself what makes mine different?  Essentially there is nothing different about my story; it is about the end of the world and one man’s fight for survival.  It has the usual antagonists, the essential set pieces to draw the logical responses.  But I wanted something different.  I wanted something that gave purpose, something that questioned our belonging, our sense of eternity and faith in God.  This isn’t a religious book in any way and does not draw on my own Christian faith, but I did want to raise the question of those drawn to the church in the story, of whether deep down, when everything else is stripped away, are we still longing for something beyond.

I also wanted to write this as a solo character experience.  When I first started making notes on this story, I hadn’t really come across many survival stories based on one character.  The standard seemed to be a group surviving together and fighting to their gruesome, and anticipated death.  Of course, the longer I left it and delved more into the genre, the more I became aware of other tales of that solo survivalist.  In a way what I wanted was an updated version of I Am Legend, not that I had read it at the time.  I didn’t read the book until halfway through writing and then saw the similarities – I have placed an obvious nod to the book for those familiar with it.  I wanted my solo character to be an everyday guy with no special skills to help him survive.  I wanted him to be the guy everyone could relate to; the average guy who could succeed or fail, excel beyond his expectations or shrink away into the dark side of the human soul.

Of course, what I expected of the story turned out not to be so simplistic.  I found out very early on that in order to have him on his own I needed to create the demise of those he lived in close proximity to.  It’s always hard trying to place this; do you tell it chronologically, or do you tell it in reverse?  It was a tough call, and for this reason I’ve found this one of the hardest books to write.  The story is simple, but in placing the events in the narrative I was left with too much choice.  Either way I played it I ended up with the group survival I had intentionally wanted to avoid.  I juggled the events back and forth, skewing the order and adapting the narrative, never really getting the character I’d originally envisioned.

I give no definite answers to the reasons for the end of the world, very much in line with the majority of post-apocalyptic stories, however there are hints to its origin beginning in the alternative universe where Time Locked is set.  I had originally thought the end chapter of that novel might end up at the beginning of this one, but I decided in the end to leave it as a footnote, a teaser to lead on to this.

I can see the attraction in writing volumes of books along the same lines of this, and I keep spinning scenarios around in my head of what would make a good spin-off (and I hint at a few in the storyline), but I plan for the moment to make this the one and only as there are so many other projects I want to write about.  If I do dabble more in the genre it will probably be in short story form.

It is strange that when you start writing a book with originality, thinking there have been vague similarities to other works in the past, but that maybe yours has a unique quality, at least in your own mind, that soon after (usually between the stage of near completion and publication) you get bombarded by similar releases on  the now overly familiar theme in your head.  At the very worst the clash of creativity and real-life events can derail any semblance of original thought.

It was as I completed the first draft of this novel that the worldwide panic over the Coronavirus began to take shape, forcing me to go back and slip in reference to it within the text.

Obviously, the global panic over Covid 19 has been devastating, and the full effects of it (medically and economically) have yet to be seen.  With this in mind I struggled with what needed adapting in the story.  I even gave pause for thought that I should abandon the project altogether; the last thing I want is to be seen to be cashing in on people’s misery.  People need stories of joy and hope, not things echoing what they have already been going through.  Although going through it I think most similarities between the pandemic lockdown and the events in the story are distant enough.

Of course, had I been disciplined and completed this on schedule last year then these thoughts wouldn’t even be on my mind.

In many ways recent events sadly bring this story much closer to home, although this is fantasy, a horror story, a psychological thriller; it was never meant to echo real life in any way.  No doubt there will be an even larger explosion of post-apocalyptic viral outbreaks hitting the bookstands in the coming years.  For me, as easy as it is to write tales of a deadly virus’ and the living dead, I wish to leave the subject behind.  I have designs on a more otherworldly exploration.

CPC

4th February 2019 - 11th March 2020

This book was to be dedicated to a friend, who sadly, due to unfortunate circumstance, would have been one of the first to succumb to the panic of the Blackout.

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BLACKOUT  

‘What is death for me?  One step farther into rest, - two, perhaps, into silence.’

Alexandre Dumas – The Count of Monte Cristo

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‘Who, if this were death, would be roused again to all the struggles and turmoils of life; to all its cares for the present; its anxieties for the future; more than all, its weary recollections of the past!’

Charles Dickens – Oliver Twist

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London is doomed.  England is collapsing.  Everything that happens is against us.

Catherine

The bustling crowd ahead shuffle with the urgency of not wanting to be late for the gig, pushing up against one another in the surge of bodies waiting to enter the would-be auditorium.  Slowly I trundle along to join them, my eyes soaking up the atmosphere as the dancing shadows fill the street around me.

The shadows, what are they if nothing but the mirage of the past, the ghosts of memory.

So many ghosts, fleeting spectres tormenting the shadows, the nooks and crannies, and hidey holes.  Even the bunker that saved my life was no safe haven from the echoes of the mind.

Crossing my line of vision, my head straining to rise to follow my eyes, are the monoliths of power, those ancient wooden pillars with their tendril arms sprawling spider webs high up across the tarmac from house to house, building to building, empty shell to empty shell.

That was where it all began, with the loss of what we had become accustomed to.  It was when the power went out that everything fell apart.

Part One

COMMUNITY

1

This is all bollocks!  It’s typical of our government not being able to organise a piss up in a brewery.  And we thought the Brexit fiasco was bad, then this shower in a shit storm hits.  Even the panic over coronavirus didn’t have a patch on this pile of stinking crap.  Okay, that’s all my cursing done with.  No more I promise.  I just needed to get it off my chest.

So, we all thought it would be a short thing, not like the lockdown’s we’d grown accustomed to in the past.  This was different.  This was sudden.  Unexpected.  No one was prepared.  That should give you an idea, an explanation of the mindless wastage that pursued in the days following.

None of us knew then that we were being screwed over by our own government.

Let me take you back to the moment it all began.

The lights go out and we all wait patiently for the blinking of the clock readouts begging to be reset.  After the first few hours we are growing anxious at not being able to charge our phones, our tablets, the Wi-Fi failing to connect all our gadgets.  Television sets can't tune into the signals and we can’t figure out why there’s not even a ghostly static filling the blank screen or why the demon power light won’t come on.  Boilers lie dormant, no longer kicking in to warm our homes, and we waste precious water trying to get the hot tap to run.

Britain awakes to dysfunctional homes.  We’ve had power cuts in the night before.  The alarms not going off to wake us for work.  Having cold showers to wake us up before throwing on our business suit or school uniform or whatever it is we require for the day.  It’s an inconvenience, to begin with at least.  But we know it’s short lived.  They’ll be a technician somewhere working to get the power back on.  A couple of hours, tops.  And it will be localised.  Enough people will call in to complain.  The power company won’t want it out so long that they have to compensate thousands of people.  It’s temporary.  All will be well by the time work is over.

Only it’s not.

Inconvenience turns to irritation turns to friction turns to anger turns eventually to panic.

There are stages of concern, but with all the gradient rises on a similar curve.  Some get there before others, the jittery, those of a nervous disposition.  The calm, more restrained, may take longer, but they get there in the end.

You could imagine that after just one day of panic with no power we could ride into the elation of community and familial contact that we’ve starved ourselves of through walking around like zombies with our heads in our tech.

Bloody hell, dare we even start talking to each other and lift our heads to see who’s sitting at the table opposite.  Maybe.  But none of us are thinking that far ahead, not yet, we’re all too busy running about frantic trying to make the world work the way we’re used to it, the way it’s supposed to be. like that’s a positive thing.

We pass the first day with a minor struggle.  We use our cars to charge our phones and then complain not about the weak intermittent and overstrained signal, but at the lack of one altogether.  We hold in our hands a brick of information designed for communication, but to throw it at someone would be to communicate far more than it was capable of with the network masts down and the Wi-Fi signals severed.

Those with the growing number of electric vehicles leave them at home to be on the safe side, no one wanting to be stranded without a charging point.  They sneer down at the smug faces of petrol-heads freewheeling past the queues at the bus stops.  We go to work, those of us that can get there, and find the situation is no better.  The buses are running.  The trains are not.  Word gets around.  Power failures and staff shortages are blamed.  The working day starts late for many as public transport limps along or is cancelled in places.

Air traffic control is down so it’s a smog free day in the skies.  No grumbling noise from above.

Everyone takes it in their stride.  It’s localised.  Maybe wider than usual, but someone’s on it.  There’s a guy in overalls and a hard-hat somewhere trying to fix the blown circuit or whatever it is that’s caused the problem.  Probably some dim-witted middle manager flicked the wrong switch and is busy passing the buck onto some lowly underpaid grunt working the night shift, now having to pull a double under threat of being fired.  That’s usually the way it goes.

There is nothing too surprising or unexpected given the circumstances.  Many are sent home from work as we slowly begin to realise our over reliance on technology in the workplace has left us impotent; we simply can't perform the basic of tasks without our computers and machinery and the electricity to run them.  Yet still, even by the end of the day, no one really knows what’s going on, nor when the power will return.  We move into that fidgety irritated stage.  We keep powering up our laptops and searching for the signal to connect.  We keep flicking on the TVs and radios hoping for a signal to burst through, even static, but black silence does nothing but stir frustration.

Into the second day and the lights are still off, which makes for a groggy start as alarms once again fail to wake us from a winter slumber.  It’s the first decent night’s sleep I’ve had in ages.  Pitch black.  No sound of traffic or airplanes.  No streetlights filtering through the gaps in the curtain.  That twinge in my back niggling from uncustomary lying in bed too long.

Communication, reliant on word of mouth, is slow to filter through as the television networks are screaming a frame of abyss on the wall.  The internet still works, so I’m told, if you can connect to it.  It’s running through servers backed up by separate generators disconnected from the main grid; how long they’ll last no one dares speculate.  No one needs to.  That guy in his overalls on his hands and knees pulling at wires has been joined by a couple of others.  It’ll be fixed in a couple of hours.  But at the back our minds we ponder, how long does a generator last?  At least until fuel supplies run low and fail to get through.

We move into that friction stage.  We grate with those closest to us.  Forced to speak to those we would normally only pass the time of day with.  The frustration builds as static buzzing off us as we desperately calculate the deadlines missed, the money lost, the work lost.  There are bigger problems: hospitals without staff, without working equipment, ventilators, heart monitors, etc; people would be dying.  But those aren’t our problems.  They’re certainly not mine.

We find charged radios; Stanley has one in his shed, and the old man Neville has an old battery operated one.  There are signals coming through but even the stations have problems as they struggle to revert back to the emergency power of a lost generation.  We hear enough to know the problem isn’t local.  It’s a national crisis.  The national grid is down.

Damn, someone is in for a bollocking.  Heads will roll.  Some chief exec will be called before an enquiry and he’ll blame, quite rightly, middle-management, who in turn will blame the poor army of men and women in overalls on the hands and knees sweating knowing they’re going to get their backsides kicked and their P45’s handed to them on a plate if they don’t find the right switch to flick.

No one expects a long-term power cut, and few remember how to cope with it.  The seventies was a long time ago, and I only have a vague memory of fetching the candles from a drawer for my old man.  Modern planned emergency procedures all fail to accept that such a possibility could even happen; permanent power failure has never been a foreseeable option.  Just the thought of it leads us to discussion of the obvious – terrorism.  Who was to gain by taking out the power grid?  What long term damage could you do to the economy if you managed to cut power and communications to a whole nation.  We always thought it would be the just the internet they would cut to cripple the west and bring the banking system crashing; the easy demise of western society.  But taking out the whole grid, pure genius.

At the end of the second day we all return to our homes and snuggle up beneath our duvets, strangely content at the stillness and silence.

The next day and the falling temperature is beginning to show its teeth as the heat dissipates from our homes and the damp rain keeps the chill in.  We scour the news services for any updates, but little is forthcoming as to when normality will resume, nor why the collapse has happened in the first place.

We move into anger phase.  We spend the day grumbling, complaining and bitching about anything and everything.  Inconvenience.  Irritation.  Friction.  Frustration.  They all roll into anger.  Some stew.  Some boil.  Those of us just simmering abandon work for the warmth of our loved ones as the country grinds to a halt by the end of day three.  We don't yet know the extent of the problem and we don’t know how others outside our immediate vicinity are reacting to it.

By day four there are whispers of panic about the financial market and how it will recover.  We had this with Covid and the ensuing lockdowns.  The government came to the rescue for many, but long term it was a killer and the country is still suffering from it.  But financially we could still see what we had.

I’m sure those suffering the major anxiety attacks are those with a big stake in savings and investments; those who could afford to lose a buck or two or deserved to.  My own personal finances are online; since when does anyone keep a paper copy?

What supplies we need we struggle to get.  All the ATM’s are down.  No cash can be withdrawn.  No proof of personal wealth or credit of any kind can be accounted for.  The barrier of class divide has fallen overnight, but none are prepared to recognise its true implications just yet.

The anger cycle is evident. 

The shops are quick to be looted.  It is soon becoming dangerous to venture out too far, for quickly panicked mind-sets are stirring a madness in people.  Neighbours, who have otherwise avoided each other in the daily unfriendly humdrum of life, passing merely a polite nod, if that, now club together to protect their own as immediate territory.  They are forced to form new local societies, communicating in ways almost forgotten since the technical age robbed us of anything other than virtual communities.

It isn't until the fifth day that we hear of the first signs of illness.  There have been rumours: the radio has whispered unconfirmed accounts of widespread disease and military action.  The internet published pictures that no one believed genuine, pulled images from movies scaremongering wildly people’s imagination.

We move into a stage not shown on the government graph that plays in my mind – fear.

Of course, we’d all heard the latest in recent weeks: another deadly potential pandemic of bird flu, SARS, Coronavirus, Mad Cow Horse Meat Eating Animal Passing bug that was the latest to have been spread by some Chinese guy eating a live bat, or a mutation from radiation eroding our immune systems caused by communication masts.  All popular recycled conspiracy theories that have done the rounds so many times that no one takes notice anymore.  Most of the population done facemasks as a matter of course now anyway, and no one batters an eyelid anymore.  Unless the government shouts panic, which they haven’t done yet – no lockdown or even an official hint about a pandemic has been whispered out of Westminster – then there is no need to get overly excited about it.  We all know what overreacting causes – the great bog roll shortage!

The only good thing about rumours of a new virus circulating is for some it’s an excuse to throw a sickie.  It also plays straight into the vegan’s propaganda to get us all off a meat diet.  There are Nightingales emergency centres set up permanently as a precaution, so no one needs to panic.

I, like most people, ignored the rumours to begin with.  We’ve all been down this road before with the governments and the WHO crying wolf, always erring on the side of caution, trying to avoid another Covid 19 scenario.  There’s the usual whinging about the authorities acting too slow in every case.  The counter argument that they don’t want to overreact and take drastic economic measures unless a disease is too virulent and rapidly aggressive in the way it spreads.  There would be lessons learned following the last pandemic to terrify the headlines.  They would, no doubt, have drawn up new plans to avoid such drastic measures this time, to prevent it crippling the country so suddenly as it had before.

Thinking back on it, there was never the prolonged news coverage that I recall on the run up.  The financial market uncertainty, the panic buying in the supermarkets, people complaining about the stockpiling: no eggs, no soap, no rice, no bloody bog roll!

This fear stage we’re in by day 5 is unlike all the previous health scares with the heightened media hype.  On reflection, it seems this has been kept as far away from the glass houses of the press as possible, taking us mostly by surprise.  We assume it’s just another flu.  Another coronavirus.  Stock up.  Self-isolate.  Wash your hands and wear a mask.

Had we known the truth, the panic would have started much earlier.

***

My naivety is the same as everyone else’s.  The assumption that modern infrastructure can cope.  That even if it grinds to a halt suddenly, all can so easily be recovered.  Even with the chaos raging around me and the rumours of illness and violence and calamity, I am still in denial.  My confidence, even though I routinely, and vocally in a grumbling middle-aged daily whine, disassociate myself from the incompetence of such, the inability of others: the state, the military, the scientific community, the medical profession, and anyone else we foresee as an authority figure, they are all still expected in my mind to restore order.  We all expect to be rescued.  We all expect someone to come running in with a magic wand of a solution: science will overcome, the military will subdue, the police will keep order, and the doctors will tend our sick.  Little do we realise that those on the front line are already stumbling at the first hurdle.

They are there now, the emergency services, those dedicated to their cause, most bravely and honourably performing their duty, which quite frankly I’d have abandoned from the get-go.  But those fleeing to the safety of the support services in those highly infectious areas, mainly the border points, seeking the sanctuary of a clinical land, flee unwittingly to a death trap of their own making.  And those brave soldiers of servitude, only returning to their loved ones with the very thing they are trying to fend off.

The walls of our security fall one by one, and too swiftly we realise we are left on our own to pick up the pieces.

2

For me it started with the strange behaviour of the crows.  I’m not a great fan of birds.  Can’t tell one from another.  Black birds, crows, ravens, I couldn’t tell you what they are or what the difference is between them, all I can say is they’re bloody annoying at the best of times.

Now, when I say their behaviour was strange, I mean it, it was odd, peculiar, more so than usual.  These crows or ravens, like I say I’ll be damned if I know the difference, these big black angry birds are supposedly fairly smart, for birds.  Well I say fairly smart, Neville tells me that they have the problem-solving skills of a seven year old, although, in my opinion, comparing it to a human has its degrees of stupidity.  Anyway, he says they’re truly intuitive and manipulative, making them one of the worlds smartest birds.  There’s no one around to contradict his facts so I’ll settle with it.

Anyway, to begin with, before the power died, I didn't think anything of it.  Wildlife does what wildlife does.  I wasn't concerned by the quirky avian displays.  Besides, I'd seen hungry crows scavenging for carrion in the past, swooping down in ones and twos, or even in flocks to a potential feeding ground of discarded human waste.  That was normal behaviour and we were all pretty blasé about it.  What I failed to notice, and too few of us observed at first, was the advanced aggressiveness of their desperation.  Early risers, such as I, picked up on the unstartled antics of the birds in the early hours as they pecked at glass frames begging, no, demanding, to be let in out of the open air where they were vulnerable to an unseen and malignant threat.

It’s a shame Jasper wasn’t as attentive or maybe we’d have all taken notice a bit sooner.

Their antics were troublesome enough during the day, but amidst the busyness of all else that transpired in the everyday humdrum of life, no one really paid them any attention, even me, and I’d seen enough of them to take note, or at least to want to throw something at them - like a brick.

It wasn't just hunger that drove them, cleverly hunting as they eked out the small spiders that hid in the tight spaces of window frames and car wing mirrors, tapping, rattling, the unruly early morning visitor demanding entry.  This wasn’t anything akin to the innocent behaviour of mere hungry birds.  It was more harrowing than that.  Hence my desire to want to lob heavy missiles at them.  Had they not been sat on cars maybe I’d have given into that temptation.

Two occasions stand out in my mind.  Often, but not always, I would catch the bus from around the corner opposite The Duke’s Head, our local pub, not that I was a frequent visitor.  Once, as I waited at the crack of dawn for a bus, I spied one of these crows/ravens (let’s settle for crows for arguments sake!).  It was outside the upstairs window of the pub.  I stood staring at it as I waited for my ride to the train station for the next leg of my journey into the centre of town.  I wouldn't have noticed the dark ominous figure at all had it not been noisily tapping continuously with its beak to be let in through the window of the pub.  Relentlessly it hammered away, and I wondered whether it had been going at it all night for the occupants to be ignoring the incessant noise.  I know the landlord has lodgings there, as well as rooms that are rented out, yet no one was reacting.  It struck me as weird.  The bird seemed angry and terrified as its head jerked repeatedly against the window frame.

The other occasion to stick in my mine, again as I walked along the road early in the morning, I saw one big bugger of a crow aggressively attacking the windscreen of a small blue car parked sleepily outside someone's home.  I knew the car.  Every morning I would think to myself, damn that car needs a clean, you’d think the guy would learn not to park under that tree every night.  But on this one particular morning I couldn’t help but think that the damned flying precursor of doom was sure to do damage to the rubber seal as it pecked away beneath the windscreen wipers lying dormant on the frame.  It raised its head at me as I passed, squawked loudly and aggressively, hissing madly as its wings flapped frantically to shoo me away as though I were the antagonist.  I backed away and crossed the road to safety and let the bird calm down.

At the time, before it all kicked off and we all got an enforced holiday from work, or redundancy, or dismissal, depending on whether or not you’re a glass-half-full type of guy, these incidents in themselves meant nothing to me, not even worthy of a mention to Caroline over dinner, not that she'd have shown any interest in any case.

It’s only now, as with so many other tales of events that have collected in the aftermath, that I realise the commonality and frequency of the bizarre and mysterious behaviour of these harbingers of death.

How did they know?  Did nature somehow instil in them a forewarning and fear of things unseen, allowing them to stockpile and seek refuge from it?  Or were they, like with the other strains of avian flu, carriers of what landed on our shores.

I will never likely know for sure, and maybe I’m reading more into it than there is, but as time goes on the crows are becoming just one of the many things to freak me out and to be feared in this new world.

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3

In many ways the time of year sucks.  I’m not a great fan of winter as it is, and it’s easy to think how things might have been smoother had it all happened six months later.  But it hadn’t.  It happened when we were all freezing our bollocks off and struggling to get the balance of a warm home verses a cheaper energy bill,

It is cold beyond belief.  To say I’m missing my gas central heating would be an understatement.

You’re thinking – gas? – right?  (Controlled by an electric thermostat and an electric powered boiler).  Typically, this winter is the coldest we’ve had in a while.  Global warming is supposed to be rising the temperature the world over and causing havoc with our weather systems.  Certainly our winters had been getting warmer over recent years.  But maybe the worldwide lockdowns over spreading pandemics had done just enough to rebalance things a little, cause this winter is a bitch!

So, if our technological age and our wasteful society has been responsible for climate change then mother nature will be sure of the reprieve.  Let her have her moment.  Just make it brief.  Let’s get back to firing up the atmosphere for another couple of hundred years or so.  Or another fifty to see me through at least.  Or maybe stretch it out a big longer for my girls.  Why should I care what happens to the planet after that?  Frankly, I don’t care if things cool down so much that we slip into another ice age so long as those guys in their overalls and hardhats restore the power to my laptop, my iPhone, and my damn radiator.

Trying to look on the positive side, with the power out, all the produce in our refrigerators and freezers would normally spoil.  The rot would stink the kitchen of every house along the street, along with the shelves of every convenience store and supermarket.  But my darling Caroline is on the ball.  She has the freezer emptied in no time and puts the contents into cool boxes and leaves them outside the backdoor where the bitter chill replaces the white monolith in the kitchen that no longer serves a purpose for anything other than extra shelf space or for a hidey hole in case of a nuclear explosion.  Not sure that last part would work but I’m sure I’ve seen it in a movie.

It’s not a long-term solution, she assures me, but then no one is thinking long-term, we all have that mental image of men in overalls and hardhats scurrying about.

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4

You know when you read books or watch films, there’s always an array of characters with amazing survival stories, tales of how they beat the odds and learned how to cope in the most ridiculous and bizarre of circumstances.  Some will be individuals.  Some will be groups.  Some will beat the crap out of those dire circumstances to triumph despite being the ones pipped to fail from the start.  Some, predictably, will not.  Stories of endurance and hope, whole communities surviving together, or forming gangs of scavengers, or just nomad travellers existing in the best way they can by moving from place to place.

I'm sure there are loads of different groups of people living in places that would make their individual fight for survival unique and spectacular.  Just about every walk of life has its own challenges, its own securities, its own weaknesses.  There are about eight billion or so tales that could be told around the world.  Many would be more adventurous, more dramatic, more enlightening than mine.  Mine is ordinary.  Hell, I am ordinary.  I’m a forty something city office worker living in the suburbs with my nuclear family in my three-bedroom semi-detached.  That’s my setting.  This here is where my feet are firmly planted.

There is absolutely no reason why I should have a story to tell.  Except that here I am.  I’m here, just as you’re there too, with nothing better to do, on lockdown, trying to weather through the storm.

The waters of time have been getting a bit murky since all this began.  Past and present get intermixed as the sparks of synapses in my head swim in a time warp of regretful reflection.  The days and weeks blur as my mind wanders, so that I feel fantasy and reality are mixing, a symptom I’m sure of post-traumatic stress disorder.  I often have to check with Caroline about the details, she’s more attentive to the finer things.  It’s also a symptom of the maddening monotony.  It’s amazing how, without work and television,