Casualty in the woods

E-Day +1 dawned calm and bright and we had escaped unscathed. Up in the woods there were a few minor casualties with some of the older birch trees losing limbs or now leaning at various angles. We still had no power in the morning and a search online using my smartphone showed that nearly all of Argyll, including Mull, was without power and the estimate for being reconnected was 17.00 hours on Monday 27th!!! We began putting strategies in place: we plugged the chest freezer into a small generator, moved all refrigerated goods into our gas powered fridge in the motor home as well as topping up our mobiles there, using the power from the leisure battery. The thing that I found most difficult to handle was that we couldn’t make contact with any friends (except our immediate neighbours) to check that they were okay because modern landline telephones rely on electricity to operate and the mobile phone signals in the village were down. So, once I had sorted things at home I hopped into the car to call on a couple of folk who were very pleased to see me. By the time I returned home sometime before 3.00pm I was delighted to find that power had been restored. We felt very fortunate as other parts of the island were having to wait longer. Our Scottish Hydro Electric engineers have done a fantastic job in very difficult and extreme conditions. I wouldn’t want their job for anything!
It’s very easy to take our electricity supply for granted and it’s not until you are without it that you really appreciate how many things need electricity to operate. While we were sitting reading and chatting by candlelight the thought crossed my mind that this would be how my ancestors would have lived, but in far less comfortable conditions. It certainly makes me grateful for my way of life.
A great big thank you to all my blip friends for your lovely words, stars and hearts for my fifth Blip anniversary yesterday. It was a truly memorable day for more than one reason!