Getting back to normal

And still the rain comes down. My heart goes out to those people in Glenridding. To have just started to clear out the muck & water from their homes to find them once more flooded, must be soul destroying. I confess we’ve still got our candles out, within easy reach, half-expecting another power cut. What they must be feeling I can’t imagine. It makes our flooding through the back door seems very minor, though rather irritating as I discovered yet more after last night’s rainfall. We’ve got the heating on all day more in the hope of drying the place out, rather than for warmth.

Yesterday I spoke to one neighbour, widowed early this year. In the summer her grandson & girlfriend came round to keep her company. They spent the whole time on their computers & mobile phones, barely talking to her. She’d exclaimed in disgust that she got better conversation & company from the dog than from this pair. However, they had to come round during the power cut for warmth & food. Our neighbour, like us, has a gas fire in one room & gas hobs for cooking. The youngster were at a loss as to what to do with just candlelight & no electronic gizmos that worked. She duly told them they had to learn to talk to each other. She even taught them how to play dominoes. By the end they were forced to admit they’d quite enjoyed themselves. Hopefully next time they visit, power cut or not, they will try again this new experience of talking to one another & to her.

Our neighbour also told us of one of her friend’s experience. Apparently this young couple had turned up at this friend’s house bearing their frozen turkey that they’d “rescued” from their freezer, which wasn’t working because of the power cuts. The mother’s reaction was “What do you expect me to do with it?” She was blacked out too. What is more she certainly wasn’t going to open her freezer, & lose all its contents, for the sake of their turkey. She, like us, knew that a freezer will keep things perfectly for about 36 hours, provided you don’t open it.

On Tuesday we went food shopping. Needless to say there weren’t any candles to buy, except a few very expensive scented (hopeless with the Fox’s allergies) or Christmas ones.  We’re getting low now but we’re not that desperate! We’ll try again next week & so on until we’re either desperate (if there’s been more power cuts) or the shops have got more supplies in.

We were more surprised by the lack of fresh food. We couldn’t decide whether it was a case of delivery difficulties or an increased demand as people had had to resort to fresh veg etc. as they couldn’t use their usual ready meals from the freezer. Our neighbour pointed out it was probably the former as these days so many younger people wouldn’t know what to do with a fresh carrot. Fortunately we only wanted a top-up shop, things like sugar & potatoes. Hopefully things will be more like normal when we go shopping next week.

That, though, will depend on the weather. If it continues to rain, as it has been doing, we may well risk losing electricity once again. Even as it is, lights flicker from time to time & we fear being plunged into dark once more.

Meanwhile we popped along to the travel agent to get some brochures. At least we can dream of sunshine & better times to come even if there isn’t much evidence of it around here at the moment.