THE ‘Home Sweet Home’ lamps they keep at King’s House are hardly intended for state occasions — like when Her Majesty is in residence.

But last night the lowly lamp, common these days in only those parts of the country still untouched by the rural electrification programme, was definitely fit for a queen. At least, Queen Elizabeth II, the monarch of Jamaica.

She had dinner by lamp light. Mostly.

For other guests, it was a candle light affair.

It wasn’t planned that way, of course. Electricity failed at the old Georgian house where the Queen and her husband, Prince Philip, are staying during Her Majesty’s jubilee visit to Jamaica.

In fact, the electricity failed twice.

The first time was at about 6:50 when most of the guests were in place and having a pre-reception cocktail. The Queen was upstairs in a drawing room having a private audience with some of the leaders of corporate Jamaica.

That first blackout lasted about 15 minutes.

The second came near 7:30. Most of the guests were seated at tables of 10 in the main banqueting hall.

The Queen’s Lady in Waiting was just heading down the stairway to enter the room and announce Her Majesty, The Queen.

But before she got too far — zap. The lights went out.

“My understanding is that a breaker in the power room tripped out,” Geoff Madden, the secretary to the governor-general, told the Observer. “It is the same breaker that is connected to the stand-by generator at Jamaica House (next door).”

The upshot: the standby power did not trip in.

People waited around a bit. They did not expect a long outage.

But when it didn’t happen, embarrassed Jamaican officials began to shuffle about.

Robert Pickersgill, recently the mining and energy minister, left his table and went outside. He was seen talking frantically on a mobile phone.

Nothing happened.

At 7:50, about 20 minutes after the outage, The Queen and her husband made their entrance, accompanied by British and Jamaican security officials holding candles. The caterers, Le Meridien Jamaica Pegasus hotel, had provided decorative candles for the tables.

At 8:10 government officials brought battery-charged, self-lighting lamps which were placed at strategic spots around the room. Earlier, a government Land Rover, registered 05D048, had been driven so as to rest its front wheels partially on the red carpet under the port-cochere. Its headlights were on, shining in the foyer and reflecting into the banquet hall.

It seemed, though, that the makeshift lighting system did not too much disturb the dinner of poached fillet talapia, marinated breast of chicken with ginger cream sauce, French beans and herb roasted potatoes.

In fact, electricity came back at 8:37 when the main courses had ended and the waiters were about to serve the dessert of banana and mango mousse.