The drifting smell of woodsmoke alerted me to the contingency plans neighbours had made for supper, but the last red meat my freezer had seen was the lost Antarctic explorer eternally frozen into one of the glaciers in its depths - together with a host of forgotten, sun-stretched casette tapes and a hard drive or two.
Besides, when one is in the mood for decent curry, nothing else will do!
And so, I went in search of the Mr Delivery menu, to see if there were curry purveyors somewhere, who might just have had enough electricity to complete their culinary adventures before blackout, and discovered that the teenagers who'd had the house to themselves during my wanderings over the sea had moved the candles from their normal, easy to find, location.
And the batteries in the torches - all of them - were flat.
There were spare AA batteries though - the wrong size for the iPod speakers, which needed AAA - and so I scratched out a light that required AA batteries.
At which point the power came back on.
Ah well - I'm off for a surf; that doesn't need any electricity...