So you see, we were warned. But no one wanted to take it seriously.
At midnight we were all outside in the street, high on the hill looking out over town. It was a balmy night. Not really cold at all. I found myself talking to neighbours I’d hardly met before. Everyone was happy and friendly, even the lady from number ten, Dr Parker, who had once told me off for dropping a crisp packet in the street. Mr Miller had run an extension lead out through his front-room window and set up a little telly on his garden wall, so we could see Big Ben doing its chimes. In the build-up to midnight, the security at the Dome went wrong and the glitterati of London all got stuck in Tube stations waiting to be let out. It was quite funny really.
“Looks like the Millennium Bug has struck early.” Mum laughed. “I’m all for it, if it gives that lot a taste of what it’s like to use public transport these days!” But she knew it was just good old-fashioned British incompetence. The kind we dream of now.
At about 11.45 p.m., the telly people interrupted their coverage of the big party to run a statement from the Prime Minister. He looked ahead to the new century and its promise of prosperity and peace. He slipped in some reassurance about any technical glitches that might happen at midnight. They would only be temporary. There was no need to panic. Mrs Miller was staring at the screen. “He’s said that once too often,” she mumbled, sounding worried. But no one took any notice and we all filled our glasses for a toast.
The cameras cut to Big Ben. The long musical chimes started, escorting out the final seconds of the year. Then there was the pause before the first big bong. But where that bong should have been there was only silence. Silence and darkness. A darkness like we’d never known. The TV screen was black. The streetlamps had gone out. Down in town there were some car headlights on the move, but very few, and they quickly flashed away. Most people were asleep, or celebrating. Looking up, I could see more stars than ever before.
And then the fireworks started. With all the lights out, it was the best display I’d ever seen. Fountains of colour burst out against the black sky. We drank and shouted, and when the explosions were over and we still couldn’t get the telly going, we drank some more and rammed candles into the empty bottles to light our way indoors. Everyone gathered by an open fire in the Millers’ house, surrounded by torches and candles. Mrs Miller played the piano, and we laughed together for hours, joking about the power cut, until gradually we each found our way home to sleep. Fergus led us down the street by the light of his new mobile phone. “It’s all it’s good for,” he said. “I can’t get a signal.”
When I woke up, late the next day, I had forgotten about the blackout. I tried to turn on my computer, but it was dead. I went to call Fergus to see if his house had any power, but the phone line was out too, and the radiators were cold. I went into the kitchen. The kettle wouldn’t switch on. The fridge was silent and dark inside. I swigged the last of the milk. It still had a slight chill to it. Then I went up to see if Mum and Dad were awake. But Dad hadn’t come home from work. Things must be worse than he’d expected. We tried the transistor radio. Nothing.
“Maybe the one in my car will work,” said Mum. “The battery gets charged by the engine.”
So we went outside – me in my slippers, her still in her dressing-gown – and sat in the car, trying to tune in. But there was only crackle and hiss.
“The BBC must be putting out something,” said Mum. “They have emergency generators for times like this. Lots of buildings do. Hospitals. Places like that.”
I looked across the town. Sure enough, there were lights on in the hospital. They were on emergency power.
“Let’s go down there. They’ll know what’s going on,” said Mum, starting the engine with no thought to what she looked like. “We can get some more petrol on the way, so we can keep the car battery going.”
But other people had had the same idea. There was a tangle of traffic round the petrol station, and a frightened man was sticking up signs saying NO POWER. PUMPS OUT. NO PETROL. Mum wriggled the car round and set off towards the hospital. It was the same there. The car park was full, and a traffic jam was snaking round the block. It was as if the whole town had been lured towards the hospital lights. We parked a few streets away and walked towards the casualty department. A man was standing on a box, shouting to the crowd outside. I recognized him. He was a local councillor, Mr Lambert. He’d given out the prizes at my school. He was a pompous prat. His hour had come.
“Order. Order please, ladies and gentlemen!” he was saying. “Everything is under control. Emergencies only now, please. The hospital is under great strain. They’ve got power, but no phones and no computers. They can’t call up anyone’s notes. They can’t run the new X-ray machines and scanners. And you can’t come in just to keep warm. Go home now and put on some woolly clothes. Everything will be back to normal before you know it.” He looked at my mother in her dressing-gown. “Are you a patient here, madam?”
“Good Lord, no!” squealed Mum, suddenly aware of her nightclothes. We ran back to the car and zoomed home. We saw a gang of men walking towards a darkened television shop. They were carrying iron bars and looked ready to smash their way in to grab what they could.
“Someone should call the police,” said Mum. But then she remembered that the phones were out and nobody could.
“We could go to the police station,” I said.
“If they hadn’t closed it down,” said Mum. “They thought it wasn’t worth having so many so close together when everyone could keep in touch by phone and in cars. They weren’t thinking about times like this. I’m not wasting petrol driving miles just to fetch the police. We’re going to have to save fuel. This might go on for days.”
And it did. For far more than just days. And it stopped being fun or interesting and started to get boring and frightening at the same time. For a little while the neighbours who had enjoyed New Year’s Eve together supported each other in their torment. Food and firesides were shared. But on the second weekend we woke to a familiar bottom disappearing over the back wall. We got downstairs and found the last of the Christmas Stilton gone.
Gradually everything that needed recharging ran out of power – you couldn’t even use a mobile phone as a torch. Those men who had raided the TV shop had chosen the wrong target. People were stealing batteries and gas bottles and boxes of matches now. The water stopped running, and sewage started backing up out of the drains. We cleaned ourselves with baby wipes, until they ran out and we just stayed dirty. People took plastic bottles to the swimming pool and collected the stale chlorine-laden water to drink.
At first, police cars toured the streets, looking for looters. They kept hungry families out of Tesco while food rotted in the dead freezers. Then the police ran out of petrol too, and requisitioned bikes – riding around, armed, to shoot thieves. Within weeks, the uniformed men on bikes became looters themselves, to feed their families. Anything they couldn’t eat they sold at extortionate prices. I asked my mum why they were doing it, when they were supposed to be in charge.
“It’s hard for anyone to be good at a time like this,” she said, “especially when you have a family. And it must be difficult to be a good policeman when you are a family man with a gun.”
People walked to nearby towns to get help and came back with rumours. It wasn’t just our town. Things were bad everywhere. There was news of the underground bunker near Bath, built long ago to house important people after a nuclear attack. Before the Bug it had been a top-secret place, known only to the Great and the Good: those with jobs of national importance. The trouble was, when things got tough, the Great and the Good had brought their families with them for shelter, and their numbers were added to by everyone who had been Great and Good in the past. Former officials, former ministers and two former prime ministers had all remembered the secret address to which they had once been privy. Soldiers had to guard the door. Shots had been fired. Famous people were dead. And the bunker was no use anyway, because there was no way of getting food in or messages out.