Power supply failure

I woke at 5 this morning to discover I had no electricity. For a couple of hrs I thought it was a simple power cut but it slowly dawned that it was a bit more than that. I am with British Gas so tried phoning them only to discover it was impossible to contact them about anything electric. The house phone was out of action and my mobile was low on battery so in between charging it in the van I finally managed to find the number of the actual supplier. They sent an engineer out who at first thought it was the main fuse at the meter,then he thought it was my fuse box at fault which prompted me going into panic mode at the thought of the cost getting an electrician on a Sunday lol. Then he found the real cause, the neutral wire going into the meter was faulty and the earth wire was live. After sending for a "gang" they dug a hole in the front lawn to isolate the supply then dug another hole outside my front door to repair the cable. Turns out that way back the gas pipe had been repaired and the electric cable runs on top of it and the original workman had "nicked" the cable and for yrs it had been shorting out and burning through till sometime in the night it finally failed. It was nearly 3.30 this afternoon before I had power back on. I still have 2 holes that have to be filled in but apparently they are not allowed to put the soil back in,it has to be removed and the cable packed with sand and compacted down. It's a good job I have gas for cooking or I would not have been able to make a hot drink all day. British Gas were a total let down frankly.