Despite a power outage that affected some 200,000 Melbourne (and some other areas of Victoria) homes and businesses, our power supply here at home was unaffected.

Mel and I were out at our nearby 7-Eleven getting a cold slurpee (to beat the 40-degree heat) when the power went off in the store — about 600 metres from home.

I managed to get the very last slurpee of the afternoon — the next guy in the queue unfortunately missed out because of the lack of power.

But thankfully our street’s power supply must be separated from our neighbouring Brunswick West area by the freeway/Citylink, as power was still on at our home office just a couple of minutes away. Houses 150m away to our east had no power. But also, in other directions, power was out in neighbouring Essendon, and Glenroy to the north.

Our upstairs office would be most unbearable without cooling on a 40-degree day: and with stage 3 water restrictions, we can’t just turn on the hose and create our own splash-cooling fun out on the lawn.

And there’s four more hot days on the way. Boy do I look forward to the cooler weather arriving!