Twitter by candlelight

Did you have a romantic Valentine’s Day?  Did it go to plan or were all your dreams and hopes crushed ?

My love life is perfectly intact but my plans didn’t exactly pan out.  I don’t like going out for Valentine’s Day but I had planned a nice home cooked dinner (Spag Bol but with Buffalo mince (no horse) to be precise), oven roasted butternut squash and celeriac mix followed by a red velvet cake.

At 6pm we had a power cut.  Just like the 1970s.  No stove, no TV, no lights, no oven, no hot water and no heating. 

In every other respect my evening was nothing like the winter of discontent.

iPad operational I found the UK Power Networks website and was invited to tweet them for updates.

Their response was very comforting.  Instead of just sitting in the dark not knowing what was going on, I at least had the feeling that Mike and Dave  @UKPowerNetworks were paying some attention to my plight.

Then up came a neighbour – hitherto unknown to me – @carriesparkle and said “Hello, I’m without power too. Whereabouts are you? I’m on the Estate and both cold and hungry.”  After a bit of banter with Carrie (can’t even go out to eat because its Valentine’s Day and restaurants full of “romantic” couples) another unknown neighbour @azeem joined the conversation saying : “I see you and @fhuszar are both having power outages in NW2”.  Turns out all three neighbours are in the comms business in one way or another.  No longer was I sitting lonely, hungry and cold in the dark.  Customer service from UK Powernetworks were at hand with cheery updates, and there was a community spirit going around in the local virtual world.  As well as my new acquaintances, I also heard from @battylala and @durranimix (thanks for the cheery comments people).

Lights came back on at 935 pm, just after we’d given up hope of home cooking and ordered pizza. 

So Twitter was both a great customer service tool, and a community building vehicle.   As @brucedaisley said “what an amazing episode”.

Twitter by candlelight – highly recommended in case of emergency, keep your iPad charged.

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