Tales of the Unexpected!

Did I say we had a holiday? OK, we stayed near Girvan in Ayrshire. It's close to the famous golf course, Turnberry.

Our accommodation was not far from the main road which runs east from Ayr to Castle-Douglas and Dumfries. In other words, near to where I grew up.

In the days when my father had his farm, a local beekeeper kept several beehives in the fields. Although the farm (and Dad) are long since gone, the beekeeper (Mr Turnbull) still has honey for sale - and we now sell it in our shop.

Sandy and I thought it would be a nice idea to call in and collect our next order while we were on holiday. More than that, the last time we received an order of the honey, I had been treated to lunch by the Turnbulls and we invited them to join us for lunch somewhere close to home.

Arrangements were duly made, we set off in good time for our lunch appointment at 12.30 pm at the Kenbridge Hotel in New Galloway (http://www.thekenbridge.co.uk) - and so we parked in the car park about 30 seconds ahead of the Turnbulls' arrival. They drew in beside us and we walked across to the hotel and into the restaurant.

Lunch was fantastic. The main courses we ordered were delicious. Looking out of the dining room window, the River Ken was in full spate, partly because the weather had been rather wet and partly because the dams which generate electricity have to run off excess water when the season becomes wet. We commented that the day was becoming cloudy and, shortly afterwards, the rain started to fall.

Dessert arrived and we were all tucking into them when we heard a loud bang and the dining room lights went out.

In our rural area, it isn't out of the ordinary for there to be power cuts; we did notice that there were other lights still working, but sort of assumed they were on an emergency backup supply. The waitress returned, gave us coffee, stoked up the open fire and lit some candles.

Some time passed. Then we were slightly startled to be told that there had been an accident on the main road outside; whatever had occurred had caused a vehicle to demolish the electricity pole carrying the power to the hotel. More than that, the cable which had come down was live and was lying between our cars and the exit to the car park. We were assured that the power company engineers had been summoned and, until the power was switched off, we should just stay there.

More time passed. The roaring fire, darkening day and candle light was atmospheric - and we started reminiscing about the good old days. The company was most enjoyable and we were all resigned to our fate. Let's face it, we were safe, dry and warm.

Around 4.45pm, the engineers seemed to be making headway with the power and just after 5.15pm, we were told that it was safe to go. We walked across the car park with the Turnbulls, transferred the honey order to our van, and set off back to Girvan. (We were pleased that the Turnbulls only had 6 miles to go as they're senior citizens.) Our journey back was uneventful and we had a light supper before starting to pack up our things for our departure on Saturday morning.

When we were checking out, we got talking to a couple of members of staff. I started to say, "You'll never guess what happened to us at the Kenbridge Hotel!" when someone walked over to Sandy and said to him "Hey - were you all ok after the accident yesterday? We were turning to come into the hotel car park, a truck travelling behind us didn't notice that we were stopping and braked hard to avoid a collision. He knocked out the power line and the live wire was sparking round our car!"

Spooky, or what!