IT is easy to forget in this modern world quite how entirely dependent on power we all are.

Not bossing people around in the office, or getting your other half to do the washing up , sort of power, but the flicking-the-light-switch-and-illumination-flooding-forth variety.

More to the point, when that power fails, it becomes extremely difficult to operate at any sort of level to which we have all become accustomed.

I say this as some dunderheads decided it was a good idea to start a fire which then took out the power cables to a vast swathe of north Kent this week.

Tens of thousands were plunged into electricity free darkness. Or, at least, were forced to live only by the light of the flaming ball of fire which is the Sun.

I make light of that, of course, and for the first half an hour of power ceasing to pulse out of people’s plug sockets, I bet it was probably quite fun. It always is.

If you’re at work and the computers and phone system goes down, you rejoice. This is a glorious time after all. No work. A glorious excuse and you get paid. It doesn’t get any better. Especially as, after another 30 minutes, you realise that the increasing amount of work you’re now missing is going to have to be done sometime. And that will mean staying late to complete it. And that’s not nearly so amusing.

Same with at home. In the evening, it’s quite fun initially as your kids all wonder what on Earth is going on and squeal in a heady mixture of excitement and concern.

But within moments the inevitable row with your partner will erupt about who forgot to buy the candles, not to mention why there is no matchbox in the house. What’s more, you can’t even storm off in a huff by virtue of the fact you can’t see where you’re going.

Worse still if the lights fail during the afternoon. Because then you really lean how reliant you are on power.

Firstly, there will be droning din of security alarms tripping as they begin to suffocate without electricity flooding into them. Then you will realise that pretty much everything you use to keep you entertained needs power.

There’s the obvious TV and stereo. The PC, the laptop, the kettle (so long cups of tea), the oven (who needs hot food anyway?), the boiler (ta ra hot water and personal hygiene), and the fridge and freezer (kiss fresh food goodbye).

All of it gone. Quicker than you can say ‘can someone check it’s not just a fuse in our house’. What’s more, prolonged absence brings an end to some of life’s real essentials. The mobile phone battery can last only so long. And when the kids’ Nintendo DS’ run out, we’re all in all sorts of terrible trouble.

But it does hammer home just how much we all rely on good old fashioned electricity. Without it we’re deprived of the ability to cook, play and work.  We can’t wash, we can’t see in the dark, we can’t, Heaven help us all, watch the TV. And our summer ice creams all melt.

Quite frankly, it’s a disaster.

Yet, perhaps, an occasional ‘black out’ would do us all good. After all, it is the waste of power and the influence all these devices have on our environment which causes the greenhouse effect which puts our very future at such risk.

Perhaps we could have some self-imposed black-outs? Perhaps on a Monday night they could just flick the switch on the National Grid between 10pm and 6am. There’s nothing worth watching on the box and we could all probably do with an early night.

Or maybe we could all agree to take lunch at 1pm so everything could go off for an hour.

Sure, there would be some emergency issues which may need some sort of addressing. But there’s always the light of the moon should we need it. And if the street lights are all off, then, as the song suggests, the stars will twinkle twinkle to lead us to wherever we need to go. Thinking about it, I suppose burglaries may rather rocket too what with all alarms deactivated and no security light. But I bet if you suggested it to the likes of Al Gore and Bono, they’d be calling a press conference and staging a series of power-hungry global concerts to draw attention to it.

Which, on that point alone, probably makes it a step too far.

Chris Britcher is editor of Kent on Saturday. Read his column each week in the paper and here online.

Just try explaining a power cut to our disabled daughter, she does not understand why she has no food cooked in front of her, she does not understand why her tv, her only source of entertainment at home does not work , she needs her clothes washed and dry for the next day, we need our tv as we hardly go out and our son who also stays at home likes his pc, well maybe we should all play scrabble, but she does not read, talk could not spell to save her life, etc etc, perhaps these selfish people should come and spend a day in our house with 24 hour care every day of the week, see if they would want to be without power, probably not. Incidentally its not much fun spending 24 hours in a nappy and not having hot water for a wash. Why not try it.