NATIONAL Grid is reporting that hundreds of homes are without power in the TR1 area - including my own. There’s a bright red pin hovering over my house on its Truro map, the time of notification 19.23.

Around 10 minutes earlier, following a series of flickers, the lights went off with a fizz and a flash of green from the top of a telegraph pole outside. A quick text around the neighbours revealed that we had all been plunged into darkness.

Thanks to Cornwall Council’s pre-storm email, as reported on this blog, I had the number to call: the National Grid emergency helpline 105. That was as far as my organisational skills went. Once the fault had been reported, the reality dawned on us that we had not only no lights, but no heating, no Wi-Fi and no TV.

This hit my teenage daughter hardest; she had so been looking forward to watching The Traitors, and spent some time trying to hotspot our iPad to mobile phone 4G, only to find the experience was not a quality one. Cue much gnashing and wailing – first world problems indeed.

I, meanwhile, was using up valuable phone battery searching for a) torches and b) compatible batteries, to no avail. Plenty of candles in evidence, but the lighter and matches, if they exist at all, were buried in the drawer equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle.

Having finally unearthed a fire source, candles were lit, everyone warned to keep flammables away. My other half, full of cold, went to bed at 8pm with a hot water bottle filled courtesy of the recently boiled kettle. There will be no radio, just the sound of the hoolie that is blowing in the garden.

Wish us luck.