Among the many treasures of modern life to be deeply cherished, village squares must surely rank highly on any list. These magnificent places constantly bear witness to a swathe of life-affirming events from weddings to local festivals; from folkloric musical performances to groups of old boys shootin' the breeze over a few glasses of beer and the life-affirming clickety-click of a set of battered dominoes.

A customary sight to behold on or near any village square worth its salt is the regular fizz and pop of a few fireworks in order to commemorate something or other of greater or lesser importance. It was not really any real surprise, then, to see the night sky all a-flicker down by the square the other evening, although it was midweek at the end of January. I just thought maybe somebody had bagged a particularly pleasing bargain in the sales or something. However, the worried faces of my companions told quite a different story. This was no spontaneous fireworks display - it was the principal electric cable junction box for the whole village spitting out sparks like there was no tomorrow (which there wouldn't have been if someone hadn't done something sharpish). Fortunately, they did.

The emergency services were first class. Both the police and the fire service arrived within minutes of receiving what was presumably a deluge of calls and dealt with everything (and everybody) in a highly efficient manner. Flames were doused as professionally as panicking pensioners were calmed. The area was swiftly taped off and we all stood around staring into the darkness, only a smattering of faces lit spookily by the electric glow of mobile telephones. Out came the candles and the lamps from dusty lofts and for a couple of hours you felt like you were on the set of a 19th-century period drama.

It was a question of just a couple of hours because that's all it took for the men from the electricity company to come and snap us back into the 21st century. If I'd have been faced with the molten cable junction box that greeted them when they arrived, there'd have been more sparks flying from my ears than we'd witnessed earlier. How do they do those things, those chaps? Extraordinary.

Next day, more engineers arrived to fix the internet connections which had been poleaxed in the drama. They worked for eleven hours straight to ensure that every householder in the village could get back to watching some cats falling over online as soon as was humanly possible.

As the last work van trundled out into the night, I reflected on the previous 48 hours and the breathtaking efficiency of the people who had arrived to get a village back on its feet so soon after a mini-crisis. If everybody everywhere did every job like that, we'd be in clover.

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