Sheila was watching her favourite soap opera, the one in which two characters who were made for each other tried in turn to find each other’s love, but each time for some reason one or both of them pretended they had no feelings for each other, so they danced around each other many times, mutually  attracted to each other but in denial about the feelings they had. They played out their passions, marrying  or consorting with ill matched characters, which only they were blind to. Finally (or was it to be final?), the lovers revealed their true feelings once again, and the screen kiss began. The TV power was cut and the scene disappeared. Simultaneously the light went off. She swore to herself; there was no one else in the house. She had just been getting carried away by the scene, had been looking forward to it all evening, and now it was happening, the programme was interrupted. She expected the TV to come back on almost immediately; it usually did when there was a break in transmission. But of course this wasn’t just the TV the lights were off too. It must be a power cut, not just the TV. Hopefully a fuse might have blown for some reason and all she would need to do was locate the trip switches. It was a while since she’d had to do this, but she had a dim memory of there being trip switches in a cupboard, and all she would have to do was to put them back on.

 ‘Now which cupboard is it?’ she asked herself, trying to remember. It was pitch black however. She cursed that she had completely drawn the curtains. There wasn’t even a chink of light. She hoped that all her lights had not been affected. She would have to make sure when she went into the other rooms, and the fridge, would that still be on?

 Feeling her way she stepped slowly towards the kitchen, banging her knee on a small table she had amazingly forgotten was there, in her own home, which she had lived in for so long. Short pain gave way quickly to anger at herself for forgetting the table, then her frustration with the unpleasantness of the situation returned. Why was this happening to her now, just when the programme she was watching became so exciting? It was just her luck.