There’s nothing like a sudden power cut to remind us of how much we take for granted.

After tea at my parents’ home on Sunday evening, my dad and I were browsing through the newspapers with half an eye on the telly when suddenly everything went dark.

“It’s like the Seventies,” I said, scrambling around for candles, remembering the occasional power cuts of my childhood.

I was more miffed about the prospect of missing the first instalment of I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! than anything else, then it hit me that a power failure could have a more serious impact.

Because my mum is bedridden she has an air-controlled mattress that is plugged into a socket – without electricity it would flatten pretty quickly, leaving her in pain and distress. As she’s in the later stages of dementia, she wouldn’t understand why it was happening.

A hoist used by her carers to get her in and out of bed relies on electricity too.

Other houses in the neighbourhood were also without power, and we saw a van with flashing lights at the end of the road.

Assuming they’d hit a cable or something, I went to see what was happening and came across five blokes in high-visibility jackets all staring into a hole in the ground. “Do you know how long the power cut is likely to go on for?” I asked.

“About ten minutes,” said one of them, without even looking up. There was no explanation of what they were doing, or apology for the inconvenience.

A couple of people with torches were milling about, so I guessed I wasn’t the only person to enquire. “A bit of notice would’ve been nice. I nearly fell downstairs when the lights went off,” said a neighbour. “They knew this was happening but didn’t notifiy anyone. They said it wasn’t worth telling 30 houses how long their power was going to be off for.”

It wasn’t long before the electricity was back on. It had been off for about half an hour in total which may seem like a minor inconvenience, but there should have been a warning. For an old person living alone, a sudden loss of power could be frightening.

When my mum’s carers arrived, they pointed out that there are people on oxygen machines who rely on electricity. As home carers, they visit several people who live on their own, some bedridden, and a sudden power cut could leave them stranded.

Householders are already facing hideous fuel bills this winter. And it seems they’re way down the priority list when it comes to courtesy too.