Blackout

During the big storms our power went off and stayed off for 30 hours. Dark days indeed.
On Tuesday morning we woke to very very windy weather, probably the worst we've experienced here and as I lay in bed listening to the tiles dancing I thought the whole roof would blow away. Mr FF brought out the camping gear, our little gas stove that had difficulty warming a pan of water, our lantern whose batteries had past their use by date and gave less light than a candle, his wind up torch and our battery radio. Thus we existed for a day and a half. We opened the doors of the stove and heated simple food and water on the fire, giving everything an interesting smoky flavour. I knitted by the light of two candles, stocking stitch was all I could manage, Mr FF read with his torch and we listened to a live football match on the radio, Tuesday was a long evening. Our bedroom was Baltic but a hot water bottle each and the torch within easy reach in case we needed to get out in the night saw us settled in.
Mr FF did have the benefit of his iPad but there wasn't that much left in the battery and he said he wanted to save that in case he needed to send an emergency email. I've never heard of one of those, I thought if we had an emergency we might use the phone or go out in the car so I found little comfort in the idea that we an email in hand.
Wednesday we decided to go out for the day, we managed showers as we had loads of hot water from the stove but without the pump there wasn't much flow and I found the top of my body warmed while my legs stayed cold. It was also dark in the cubicle but as I explained to Mr FF that wasn't a problem as I know my way round my body pretty well. Getting in and out of the shower was invigorating but at least we were clean while we traipsed round a few supermarkets that were quite chilly. We ended up in the cafe in Ikea, which was relatively cosy and a plate of meatballs and mashed potato cheered me up no end but then mashed potato is my happy food. We had to resist the temptation to snuggle down into a bed in one of the room sets, watched a bit of telly in another and came home late afternoon. We practically held our breath driving home in case the village was still in darkness, the first part had power but the middle of the village was off so we didn't have great hopes as we turned off the main road where the street lights were still off towards our house. Hurray, we had power, it had been on for about an hour when we go home. Last night was bliss, heat in more than one room, light, telly, internet, proper cooking. Driving along yesterday we'd seen so much destruction, lots of trees down, fences blown away, several garden greenhouses completely destroyed. We were lucky to escape any real damage, so grateful to have our power back and still have email to spare.