Just felt a terrible earthquake shuddering through the house and setting the whole heating system in motion, with the hot water cylinder behind me shaking alarmingly.

Then nothing.  All went quiet.  No-one out in the street.  A few car alarms going off.  P waking up violently and asking what the hell it was.

Then phone goes off, and for a good twenty minutes, Twitter scooped the 24-hour news channels.  It’s clear that it’s big – I expected to hear from Troubled Diva the other side of town, but to hear from Alan as well – in Manchester – means it’s pretty damn big.  For a while, all the news from Twitter keeps us pretty informed, but before long, it’s on the telly and internet as well.

Here’s my twitter record – not including all the extra ones that come up because I’m tracking whenever anyone anywhere mentions “Nottingham” – and in reverse chronological order.

• alexfoster   Sky news lady pulled a really funny face when caller mentioned animals, including “ducks in the house”
• miketd Sky News lady really couldn’t give two shits, could she?
• miketd 4.7 = “Light”, which is quite boring really: http://tinyurl.com/3al7ge
• alanfleming Community reporting in: http://tinyurl.com/2ee333
• alexfoster Laffing at Sky lady’s face as she tries to be empathetic
• miketd 4.7 on Richter scale: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/
• alexfoster Map on internet says epicentre nr Cleethorpes, felt from York to Bristol + London. Never felt one like that!
• alexfoster Cats still majorly spooked
• miketd @alexfoster: Yeah, it was our heating system that did most of the shuddering as well. BBC News and Sky News still saying Midlands only?
• alanfleming Quake confirmed: 4.7: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/…
• alexfoster @miketd we thought our dodgy back wall was falling off. Whole heating system shuddered. Sky News finally reporting.
• miketd Shall I make everyone a nice cup of cocoa, before we all toddle back off to bed?
• miketd I thought it was the washing machine going onto spin!
• miketd @bob: Yeah, fine thanks. Twitter Public Timeline full of reports of the same thing.
• alanfleming no info yet but report say was felt in London, my guess is 4.7.
• miketd The “most read” story on the BBC news site is about an earthquake… in Kent… in April 2007. Half the country must be using Search!
• alexfoster Cripes – twitter suggests the earthquake we just had was felt in Manchester too!
• miketd K and I still both shaking. I felt it on the ground floor, he felt it two storeys up. FUCK. Never felt anything like that before.
• miketd WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK WAS THAT? I think we’ve just experienced an earth tremor. Whole house shook, alarms going off outside.
• alanfleming fucking hell – that felt like an earthquake. not small either.