There was a time when the electricity going off was not an unusual event. It might happen during a storm, after some problem with the local supply or simply for reasons that nobody in the house completely understood. One minute you would be watching television, making a cup of tea or doing something perfectly ordinary, and the next the entire house would suddenly go quiet.
For Gen X, a power cut was part of growing up. There were no smartphones to reach for, no streaming service to continue watching and no smart speaker to ask what was happening. When the lights went out, the lights really went out.
And somehow, we survived.
In fact, a power cut could occasionally turn into one of those unexpected family moments that everyone remembers years later.
The first thing you did was check whether it was just you
The immediate reaction was usually the same.
Someone would flick the light switch. Nothing.
They would try another one. Still nothing.
Then somebody would walk into another room and try another switch, just in case the electricity had somehow decided to stop working in one particular part of the house.
Eventually came the question: “Has the power gone off?”
It was an entirely reasonable question, despite the fact that everyone had already established that the lights weren’t working.
Then came the investigation. You might look out of the window and discover that the neighbours were also sitting in darkness. If the whole street was black, that was your confirmation.
There was something reassuring about seeing other houses affected. It meant it wasn’t your fault.
Find the candles
Once it became clear that the power wasn’t coming back immediately, the next challenge was finding a source of light.
Most homes had candles somewhere, although the location was often forgotten until the precise moment they were needed.
There was usually a drawer containing a strange collection of things that nobody had touched for years. Batteries, old birthday candles, string, a screwdriver, takeaway menus, bits of electrical cable and possibly a torch that hadn’t worked since 1997.
Finding the torch was an achievement in itself.
Finding batteries that actually worked was the next challenge.
The torch became the most important object in the house
A torch that normally sat untouched in a cupboard suddenly became incredibly valuable.
People who had ignored it for years were suddenly asking where it was. Someone would inevitably say, “It should be in the drawer,” as though the torch had signed a tenancy agreement and was legally obliged to remain there.
Then came the traditional moment when somebody switched it on and discovered that the batteries were almost dead.
The beam would be weak, slightly yellow and completely incapable of illuminating more than about two feet of carpet.
It didn’t matter. It was a torch, and for the next few minutes it was treated like a piece of essential survival equipment.
The radio suddenly mattered again
Without television, the radio became the main source of information and entertainment.
A battery-powered radio could tell you whether the power cut was affecting the local area, whether there was a problem with the electricity network and, perhaps most importantly, whether anybody had any idea when the power might come back.
For Gen X, this was a familiar experience. The radio didn’t need Wi-Fi, an app or a software update. Put some batteries in it and it worked.
There was also something comforting about hearing a familiar voice coming out of the darkness.
Suddenly the radio wasn’t just background noise. It was your connection to what was happening outside.
Someone always opened the fridge
There is a strange human instinct to open the fridge when the electricity goes off.
You know perfectly well that opening the door isn’t going to make the food colder. In fact, quite the opposite. But somebody will still open it.
“Do you think everything’s alright in here?”
Nobody knows exactly what they are checking.
The milk is still there. The cheese hasn’t changed. The leftovers look exactly as they did twenty minutes earlier.
Yet the fridge gets opened several times during a power cut, usually followed by somebody saying, “Don’t keep opening it.”
And then five minutes later somebody else opens it.
The freezer became a matter of national importance
The freezer was treated with even greater seriousness.
Suddenly everybody needed to know how long the food would remain frozen. The freezer door was not to be opened under any circumstances unless there was an extremely good reason.
You might hear warnings such as, “Don’t open that, you’ll let the cold out.”
Nobody quite knew how long the food would actually remain frozen, but everyone understood that opening the door was apparently the worst thing you could possibly do.
This was particularly important if there was ice cream inside.
Some things simply had to be protected.
Candles made everything feel different
Once the candles were lit, the house changed completely.
Rooms that normally felt ordinary suddenly became dark and quiet. Shadows appeared on the walls. The usual background noise disappeared and everyone became much more aware of the sounds outside.
There was no television humming away in the corner. No washing machine. No dishwasher. No computer fan. No music unless somebody had remembered the battery radio.
You could suddenly hear the house itself.
And for children, this could be fascinating.
Until it wasn’t.
Because eventually somebody would mention ghosts, burglars or something else that absolutely did not need mentioning when everyone was sitting in the dark.
We talked
Perhaps the strangest thing about a power cut was what happened when there was nothing else to do.
People talked.
Families sat around the kitchen table, living room or wherever there was enough candlelight and simply chatted. You might play cards, tell stories, discuss what had happened during the day or complain about how long the electricity was taking to come back.
Without television or other distractions, conversations sometimes went in completely unexpected directions.
Of course, if you were a teenager, there was probably a limit to how long you were prepared to have a meaningful conversation with your parents.
But even teenagers eventually ran out of things to do.
Board games came out
A power cut was an excellent excuse to find the board games.
Monopoly, Scrabble, Cluedo, cards and whatever else was hiding in the cupboard could suddenly become the evening’s entertainment.
The rules were usually remembered differently by every member of the family.
“I’ve always played it this way.”
“No you haven’t.”
“Yes I have.”
“That’s not the rule.”
It was entirely possible for a power cut to last only an hour and still result in a family argument that continued for the next twenty years.
The game might have been Cluedo, but somebody was definitely being accused of cheating.
We went outside
If the weather was reasonable and the situation was safe, people sometimes stepped outside.
A power cut at night could make the whole neighbourhood look completely different. Without streetlights, houses and roads suddenly disappeared into darkness.
You became aware of how much artificial light normally surrounds us.
You could look up and see more of the night sky. You could hear things you wouldn’t normally notice. Neighbours might be standing outside too, discussing what had happened.
There was a strange sense of community in discovering that everyone else was experiencing exactly the same inconvenience.
There was no immediate solution
This is perhaps the biggest difference between then and now.
When the power went off, there wasn’t necessarily anything you could do about it.
You couldn’t immediately search online for the cause. You couldn’t check an app every thirty seconds for an update. You couldn’t post on social media asking whether anyone else had lost power.
You simply waited.
And waiting was something Gen X was rather better at because we had plenty of practice.
We waited for television programmes. We waited for photographs to be developed. We waited for friends to call. We waited for buses and trains. We waited for letters.
A power cut was just another occasion when you had to accept that something wasn’t going to happen immediately.
And then everything came back
Eventually, usually without warning, the lights would flicker.
Everyone would stop talking.
There might be another flicker.
Then suddenly the television would burst back into life, lights would come on, clocks would start flashing and various appliances around the house would spring back into action.
There was always a brief moment of confusion.
“What time is it?”
“Is the TV supposed to be doing that?”
“Has the heating come back on?”
Then came the realisation that the power was back.
The television would be switched on almost immediately, the kettle would go on and someone would probably start resetting every clock in the house.
And just like that, normal life resumed.
We didn’t have much, but we had ways to cope
Looking back, a power cut seems almost like an accidental lesson in doing without.
There was no endless entertainment available at the touch of a screen. No instant access to information. No way of filling every quiet moment.
Instead, you found a candle. You found a pack of cards. You talked. You listened to the radio. You made jokes. You sat in the dark and waited.
It wasn’t always enjoyable, particularly when the heating went off in the middle of winter or you discovered that the freezer contained several weeks’ worth of food that might now be at risk.
But there was also something strangely memorable about it.
For Gen X, the power cut was one of those moments when modern life temporarily disappeared and you were forced to return to something simpler.
Perhaps that is why some of us still remember them so clearly.
Not because the electricity going off was particularly exciting, but because for a little while, everyone stopped doing everything else.
The screens went dark. The machines stopped. The house became quiet.
And people simply spent time together.
What did your family always do when the power went off, and what is the most memorable power cut you remember?
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