Drunk Drivers and Power Failure

Last night we had great excitement in the street... about 8.30pm we heard a tremendous crash, and then a lesser noise - at which all the lights started flickering madly and the computers re-booted themselves! Richard and the boys rushed outside, to find that half the street was in total darkness and all the streetlights had gone out. An electricity pole (cables are overhead here) a few metres away from our house was wobbling, having been hit by something - with wires sparking like anything!! Very dangerous...

Neighbours started pouring out of houses, and talking in a mixture of Greek and English. They discovered that a large blue van had been weaving to and fro down the street (people who saw it thought the driver must have been drunk). It had bashed into a wall at the other end of the street, and then hit this pole - and driven away. One of the people in the street chased it on a motorbike but didn't catch it up - so we don't know what other damage might have been done elsewhere.

Someone managed to phone the electricity board, who arrived about 15 minutes later and turned off the mains to the whole street so our house was in complete darkness too. I needed to finish washing up so I did that by candlelight. We have quite a few candles so when Tim came in to warn me that we were about to have all the power off, I found a torch and then lit as many candles as I could find.

People were saying we could be without electricity for days... but thankfully the repairmen worked quickly and through half the night, so by about 2am (according to Richard, who woke up) it was all fixed again. We were also very thankful it didn't rain last night, as was forecast. Of course the fridge and freezer were without power for six hours or so, but we didn't open them so hope all the food is all right.