[Saphire]

Our lightening strike melted 50yds of telephone cable before switching to the mains electric. None of the TV's were switched on at wall sockets they were switched off I am always frightened of plugs overheating so habit makes me switch them off. The Telephone engineer was amazed at the amount of damage to the phone line in the street. It turned out that the modern phone wall sockets don't have lightening conductors in. We where told later, we should have got them to pay up not the insurance.

I had a very frightening experience a couple of years ago when on the Archery field, we were just collecting our arrows out of the target when there was a smell of sulphur and all the ladies hair stood on end, then there was a bang as the lightening struck a pylon with a small generator at the bottom this was about 50yds away from where we were stood, umbrellas where dropped immediately some ladies through themselves on the floor and lay flat, sometimes one of the judges sits within about 10ft of the generator luckily not that day. A few minutes earlier there would have been about 200 Archers shooting arrows with metal stabilizers pointing in the air shooting. The competition was abandoned there and then. I nearly **** myself with fright. Not a pleasant experience.