The storm raged, the wind gusted and a poor old tree wrapped in ivy came crashing down across our lane, bringing with it electric cables, telephone lines and our fibre broadband line. Working at the end of a quiet no-through country lane, we know from past experience that getting our fibre and ‘phone line repaired is not going to be an urgent priority. The communications between different departments of BT is slow and regulation hoops must be jumped through before any actual physical work can start. Luckily, we have a wonderfully supportive local community so we unplugged our computers and toddled round to a neighbour’s farm office to weather the storm until service was resumed.
The electricity was back on by the end of the day but sadly a power surge had taken out several pieces of electrical equipment – including 
the cat’s calming plug in diffuser! But both cats and dog were reasonably happy, they had radiators to snuggle up to and weren’t bothered at all by not being able to upload selfies to Facebook or Instagram. They stayed at home to look after things while we were kept company in our new temporary studio by the adorable if slightly pungent Bertie. He had the ability to read minds – I merely had to think about opening the packet of biscuits for him to suddenly appear on my lap.
Two weeks later, and after 2 days of work by some very pleasant OpenReach engineers, our broadband and phone lines were reinstated and we moved back in … to our NEW studio. We had taken the opportunity to move things around so we aren’t sitting in full sunlight all day and having to keep the blinds drawn. We managed to carry on our day to day business with no interruption to service – the only thing that had to be cancelled was a gig we were to be playing on the night of the storm.
Many thanks to Peter and Jackie Appleton of Primrose Farm. And Bertie.