Preparedness for when

mardatha

Mine was a crane driver in the docks grandma - if he wasn't on short time then he was on strike. Hard times for us but yes, porridge, soup, and rice pud kept us alive lol

grandma247

Oh yes I remember the dock strikes too My father was in the army and we travelled with him . The last time we had crates shipped from abroad we had to wait a very long time for them to arrive.

[Deleted User]

Thinking about the 3 day week way back I didn't even have an electric typewriter or till, not even an electric calculator just one of the big desktop ones with a handle on the side and ledgers to write in so the candlelight enabled me to keep working in the office even though the power was out. At home too we only had the fridge that was permanently using the electricity, we had a gas stove and a hob kettle and even a tin bath in the yard so we could stay clean. The shops stayed open in the main because we had manual cash registers so I think life although not as normal, still went on. I'm sure that these days it would be very much an impossibility to carry on life as normal as every aspect of our everyday lives is dependent on a power supply to work our machinery from the electric shower and hot water heater to the online banking to the tills in the shops, ALL the shops, to the electric pumps for fuel for the cars not to mention the myriad gadgets and entertainment mediums we all have and feel are necessities in our lives. I think the population in general has become accustomed to its creature comforts and its needs being available 24 hours a day, I think it would be a very unhappy nation if it was unavailable on tap. It wasn't at all easy in the 70s but I think we were more stoic as a nation and more equipped to make the best of the situation than we are today, Lyn xxx.

grandma247

We had one of those calculators with the handle too and it was brought out especially for me during the power cuts I had to check all the invoices that came in. I remember them buying an electric calculator when I started working there. It was huge and you certainly would not have been able to put that in your pocket .

mardatha

If it happens this winter, head for your nearest wee corner shop. They will be able to take cash over the counter, but the big supermarkets won't.

VJsmum

I was born in '63 too and remember the 3 day week. What I remember most is the lights and tv going off at 6 o'clock. Dad would come in with lit candles at 5.55 and if you were lucky you saw the news headlines just before it went off.

It was the first time I ever heard the Archers as we would listen to the radio - now I never miss it!

My OH lived near a prison and never experienced the power going off as they must have been on the same circuit.

A few years later, our town got flooded two years in a row. The water came right up to our doorstep but not inside (the neighbours were not so lucky). You do think the S is HTF when police cars wake you up at 3 in the morning sirens wailing and loudspeaker messages that you can't understand at first (in fact they were saying "a flood is imminent, move furniture and valuables upstairs"). There was no way we could do that as it was heavy old fashioned stuff so we just had to sit and wait - and then the lights went off :eek: presumably as the water hit the substation. I will never forget the sight of the water rushing across the field outside our house and then right up to the step.

We were without power for a couple of days, though we did still have gas. Luckily it was just after Christmas, so mum still had a storecupboard full of stuff she'd bought for the festive season. I remember eating tinned chicken with tinned potatoes and salad. I read a whole Agatha Christie novel in one day cos there was nothing else to do.

Happy days!:D

westcoastscot

I guess our experience of outages will very much depend on how prepped we are and our mindset. You are right we are much more dependent on electricity for everything now - it has concerned me greatly here that a lot of the Housing Association houses are going over to all electric - wonder what they are thinking???? no power really is routine here over the winter, and of course we're a relatively small population in a difficult to reach area when bad weather hits - dumb really. We have one shop who will take cash over the counter, and he also has a fair sized store room behind, but the co-op just closes as even the doors don't work in an outage, and of course they have deliveries everyday so run out really quickly.

WCS

[Deleted User]

WCS we'll be as prepared as it is possible to be in all areas of life but we'll be in the very small minority I suspect. It is a symptom of the 24 hour availability of all things that makes people think they have no need to make contingency plans for anything. I wonder how many complete shut downs of the system it will take to make Joe Public take on board the sense of thinking ahead and making some provision for even basics like food and water instead of having the attitude that 'they' will fix it all, we don't have to do anything but wait? I think there are some very hard lessons to be learned in the very near future by an awful lot of people!!! Lyn xxx.

short_bird

Ah, the joys of French homework by candlelight sitting in front of the coal fire :rotfl: Balanced by the night sky, absolutely lovely without the light pollution. I digress.

Here's an interesting tale: Warren Buffett's selling his stocks in US companies... http://www.moneynews.com/Outbrain/billionaires-dump-economist-stock/2012/08/29/id/450265?PROMO_CODE=FE8A-1

Hmmm. I have a bad feeling about this.

Cheapskate

I don't remember too much about the shortages in the 70s, I was probably young enough to be going to bed at 7pm anyway! :rotfl: We had a gas cooker that ran on bottled gas and mum often used candles/nightlights/torches as the leccy was a bit dicky in the first place, so she could cook as normal. I do remember bread shortages, but mum just switched to making her own (she's a baker's daughter), and she always had a well-stocked pantry. We nearly always did toast on a long fork over the coal fire anyway, esp in the winter, so food and drink was never a problem.

Our local butcher still has manual scales and till, alongside electronic scales, and is bright enough to keep a tally book for regulars if it came to it! We often get extra bits chucked in, rag ends of bacon for pennies, etc., bit like regulars got extra in the war!

WCS, didn't realise quite where you lived before, you're quite close to my dad's childhood village, absolutely love it up there, even if it is isolated.

A xo