Power Cuts

I suppose what I wrote about the storm of 1987 was small beer compared with what has just happened in the U.S,A. Being without electricity is catastrophic.  Everything we use these days seems to depend on a regular supply of electricity.
Looking at a diary entry for November 1950 I see that we had a power cut and I was having a frantic hunt for matches and candles. Power cuts happened quite often and would last for two or three hours so I should have been prepared. We were living in a large house in London and I had just brought a load of  rain soaked washing in from the garden which I would have to dry by the fire. (No tumble drier in those days).  There was a shortage of coke for the kitchen boiler , a brute to get going anyway, so there was no heat in the kitchen and no hot water. I had a new gas cooker and we had just had a delivery of coal for the sitting room fire.  The coal was delivered by horse and cart.  There was a horse trough opposite our house where the horse stopped regularly for a drink of water.  One winter's day the water in the trough was frozen and the coalman came in my kitchen with an enormous bucket to get some water for his horse.
Even so long after the war ended there was still a shortage of many things.  It would appear that I was obsessed  with buying an extra blanket as I was expecting my sister-in-law and family to stay.  I had been to Brixton and Croydon but no blankets were to be had.  As it turned out it didn't matter as the boys got measles so they didn't come.  Life was very fraught in those days.  Now if you have the money ( or even if you don't) you can go to the shops and buy whatever you want.