You'd soon run out of clean knickers . . .

What we take for granted - above all, power.  Power to heat, light, cook, preserve.

I've been thinking about this recently, and wondering whether the Government Nanny-State guidance to us to build up 3 days' store of foodstuffs, especially things which don't need to be heated/cooked, and water, have anything to do with threats from Putin to cut off power supplies.  

I used to work for the Marine division of the Post Office, back in the day, and know only too well how many (now fibre-optic) telecommunications cables run beneath the sea.  In the past they would sometimes be dredged up accidentally but now there is a much more targeted approach from our enemies.  Think how easily supply lines for food could be attacked and how instantaneous the result.  In the past, supermarkets used to keep stocks of supplies on site - they no longer do.  When they have run out in store - that's it until the next delivery.  With no communication system, that's it for a while.   That's it on the most basic level - no food, no power.  How to hit a country hard.

Halloween on Llandrindod lake.

An attack on the under-sea gas pipeline from Norway to the UK would be catastrophic too.  In rural areas in Wales, we don't have access to gas anyway, unless we buy it in cylinders to heat a cooker or stove.  I am very vulnerable here as I am all electric - we did consider having a wood-burning stove put in, but there is no functioning fireplace - the old one in the kitchen does have a non-functioning cast iron gas heater, but it was condemned before we got here.  It was connected to an outside supply (gas cylinder).  Gas fumes and asthmatics don't go well together though.  The original chimney above it was covered and I have a storecupboard, with a little window in it, so no longer any good as a chimney!!  Keeping warm and fed would be reliant on blankets, quilts and a primus stove . . . .

It may never happen, but in the middle of the night, when I can't sleep, such thoughts go through my head and cause much pondering! I am perhaps fortunate that less than half a mile away is a shop called The Bug Out, which is about survival equipment and prepping . . .  Perhaps I should check it out!!!  My little recently-bought wind-up radio and phone charger seems a bit inadequate!!

On that happy note I shall leave you and go and see how much it is going to cost to sort out my malfunctioning handbrake (which did NOT want to co-operate when I had to pull off a single track lane last evening coming back from Tam's - 10 sacks of rubbish stopped me pulling into the top of the STEEP driveway and I had to drive down it. Think Porlock hill in miniature (about a 1 in 4 steepness). Handbrake didn't hold and I thought I was going to go through their gate before I could hold it on the footbrake to start reversing out . . .  Oh, and my phone has Malware on it (came in on a QR scanner), so more expense.  Tam tried to fix it yesterday, but it's a sort of self-replenishing one.  Barsteward thing.  (Update: the lad at the phone shop fixed it in about one minute flat . . .)  Phew.  Garage closed (as it was when I passed it last week, so the handbrake will have to wait).

Whilst I was out, I was thinking about how it was when I was growing up.  No central heating of course, just a coal fire in one room.  Mum kept warm-ish in the kitchen (which she called the scullery) with a paraffin heater.  This same beast heated the icy bathroom on bath night.  In winter there was often frost inside the windows where condensation had formed.  Clothes often felt damp.  You put the clothes you were going to wear next day (often the ones worn the previous day, plus clean knickers) on the bottom of the bed so you had extra heat and they weren't icy cold to put on.   When small I wore Liberty Bodices, which were like a fleecy lined vest.  If there had been a storm and a power outage, mum would light the living room, which had the coal fire, with a Hurricane Lamp on the table.  We would play cards or board games until the power came back on again.  Our old house had a gas supply and mum had a gas stove, so we could always boil up a kettle for a hot drink, or cook on it.

At Ynyswen, in 2010, we had about 1 foot of snow on the ground when we woke up on Christmas morning.  That was the day the central heating boiler decided to give up the ghost, and as we were on the waiting list for a replacement one under the Warm Front scheme, it wasn't until April until THAT happened!  We thanked Heaven for the Spanish Hergom stove in the kitchen (which heated the room and you could heat things in pans on the top and it heated a couple of radiators too).  It was a multifuel stove, but once we had it changed to oil it lost its oomph and the oven was only good to warm plates in.  We had the woodburner in the living room and often said that was the only thing which saved us from hypothermia that winter. 

So let's hope and pray we keep our electricity supply . . .