Power cuts, as a 2009 Orange mobile advert campaign once had us believe, are the stuff of great festivity. Yet I recall looking around the reality of the power cut that struck the entire DA postcode area on 20th July 2009, and saw nothing of the North-Eastern US style looting, fireworks, hugging or good times shared among new friends who hours ago would have been strangers abusing each other. Instead, I recall seeing a lot of "Closed, Power Cut" messages scrawled on A4 notices taped over the shutters of every trades building across Bexleyheath, mobile phone signal depleted as our local mast plunged into a coma (what was the point that Orange was making again?) and very little else actually as the sun went down and the lights didn't work. Obviously.
Consequently, reading for pleasure went out the window, eating gas warmed chips in the dark was losing its appeal and I quickly grew tired of constantly reminding myself that "putting on a DVD to pass the time" was an equally ridiculous idea each of the 12 times it occurred to me. The only perk I could take from the lack of power and communication, the distant ringing of continuous alarm bells and the faint howling of urgent police cars, was the distinct sensation that I had been placed in a post apocalyptic zombie landscape.
Later, a local news source reported that a suspected arson had occurred at an EDF processing plant, damaging a bank of security protected electricity cables and knocking out power to the whole borough. They used the term 'suspected', but I took that to mean 'this is exactly what happened', as people carrying with them the necessary tools to start fires rarely break into secure facilities of obvious industrial importance and accidentally start fires.
Several days of rolling emergency power distributions followed, meaning that I had only very small windows of opportunity to race to my office, flick on my computer and hash out as much illustration work as possible before everything rescinded into muted darkness once again. I took one of those opportunities to hastily throw together the illustration shown on today's THREEHUNDREDANDSIXTEEFIVE challenge T-shirt - a commemorative garment for The DA Blackout 2009 depicting the town centre clocktower and a few housing estates struck down by lightning.
The day the power was restored, I placed a rush order with the local print shop to knock up a cardboard box of tees and took to the streets to try and flog them to the affected community as they disembarked their trains back from London.
I sold one.
