Erictricity.

Continuing blog on utilities. Today the focus is on the power, the electricity that we so desperately need for our lives to run.

My neighbours from next door appeared to inform me that power was down and could I use my powers of perseverance to find out what was going on. I rang OVO and following various attempts got through to India. The lady sounded very nice and to tell her what the call was about needed answers to three questions. Next I was told that it was not a service problem but a distribution problem. I asked who were the distributors but she didn’t know. The nice lady said she would find out and we then got cut off.

I then took another call and finished that to then find a voicemail from the nice Indian Lady for me to call her back as she now had the number. Unfortunately she didn’t realise I couldn’t call her back as I had no name and only a generic number. Mr Perseverance ( me ) was beaten and at the point of surrender when I found that all I had to do was dial 105 when power was off.

I dialled 105 and met another Robot with whom I exchanged digits of my postcode only then to be told that in a region with another post code the power was down and would be back by 2.30pm

My energy returned with forensic determination to get through especially as my neighbour was a vulnerable adult on a pacemaker linked to systems that need electricity.

Then out of nowhere came a phone call to my neighbours to say that someone had reported power down but help was on the way. 10 minutes later Eric appeared from OVO to inform us that a fuse in the local area had just been replaced . Where Eric came from and how he got there I will never really know. I did find this morning that providers are not distributors and that ultimately it’s down to the Eric’s of this world.

Erictricity.