In many countries shop owners lose thousands when opportunistic looters strike during power outages.

In stark contrast, we saw money left on top of stacks of newspapers lying outside the Stationery Store on Reid Street. This was in payment for papers taken.

@EDITRULE:National holiday?

No doubt excited at the prospect of shopping and general browsing through the City of Hamilton, a visiting couple were confused to find very little open and locals off from work and celebrating.

?Is today a national holiday here?? they asked.

@EDITRULE:

Bermudians consider their holidays and public celebrations sacrosanct. Yesterday, Lois Burgess appeared not to be the slightest bit upset at the power outage.

Sitting with a friend outside the Post Office on Parliament Street she told our reporter: ?I call this the day that we should have been getting for the cricketers making the World Cup.?

?I don?t know if they are still going to do it now (the motorcade)but people are waiting around for it, so they need to get it sorted out. They gave us a day to celebrate, to celebrate with them.?

@EDITRULE:Reporters are not engineers

Belco chiefs explained at a Press conference yesterday that the root cause of the fire was a fault in one of their ?switches?. Determined to better understand this the reporter asked what a switch looks like.

?Like a box. Like a panel breaker that you have in your house,? was the answer.

When asked to put this in layman?s terms the Belco chief said: ?I thought I just did.?

Sitting on a bus from St. George?s to Hamilton, a senior overheard an obviously overzealous young Bermudian woman telling tourists that the power outage was the work of arsonists.

Annoyed at the conversation the senior said she was forced to set the matter straight when the tourists then began to link the Belco fire to the recent London bombings.

?The two are completely unrelated I can assure you,? the senior said. ? My daughter is a reporter and has told me no such thing. I don?t know where this young lady has picked up her information.?