Unusual fault

Gentlemen,
any of you clever buggers explain to me what occurred today, about 13:00 this afternoon I was enjoying a cup of tea with a magazine in hand when I suddenly noticed how quiet it had become, i.e. no washing machine, central heating etc. Upon investigation I found equipment on, supposedly, but not working so I plugged a power check meter into a socket and found it reading 150, 40, 0, 150, 40, 0 etc no lights worked except the bulbs in the kitchen but very dim the rest are all power savers. I rang the electricity board who said they had just received another call from somebody else in the village so would send an engineer to the substation. At 15:00 it all came back to normal.
I assume it was a phase fault as others were not effected but why the large drop in power ????
Martin P

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We get that now and then; typically the voltage drops to somewhere between 90 and 150. According to an electricity board engineer to whom I spoke, it's due to one phase having become disconnected.
We are supplied via local overhead lines (3.3 or 11kV), and these tend to suffer when tree branches grow too close, or in high winds.
Perhaps it's time to find some tuits, and get my rad-cooled D put back together again, and belted up to the 110v alternator that's hidden in deep shedspace...