There’s a lot of talk in green circles of ‘living off the grid’ – Nick Rosen wrote quite an entertaining book about it – and now I’m going to have a brief, involuntary go. They’re going to turn our mains off.

When I wrote The Global Warming Survival Kit I made the first ‘how to’ chapter about dealing with power cuts. I’ve had several people ask why, as this doesn’t seem to have a direct climate-related cause. In fact, most extreme weather can bring blackouts, whether it’s floods as we saw in the UK this year, wind bringing down lines, heat causing lines to sag and short out or ice having the same effect.

These days, coping without electricity is alien to our whole way of life. That’s why I gave it such a priority.

I’m not losing my power permanently. They are taking us off the grid for 2 weeks while some infrastructure work is done. We’re told we won’t notice that we’re on a generator (expect that there’s a big noisy thing chugging in the drive).

We’ll see. I’ve just been told I’ve got ten minutes until the power goes. I hope to be back soon, but if you don’t hear from me, you’ll know why…