Jill's Blog

Jill, old enough not to want to give away her age, is mother to four demanding daughters that keep her on her toes when it comes to anything retail and beauty related.

Jill much prefers shopping online to fighting the masses instore and her favourite websites include EveLom.co.uk, OkaDirect.com, TimeToSpa.co.uk, Inverawe.co.uk and FormanAndField.com (the latter two keep the men in the family smiling!).

And All the Lights Went Out!

Published on Monday 18th January 2010

2010 is here and it came in with a huge blast – the snow came down in our part of South East England as if it would never stop. Consequently, I’ve hardly left the house for 6 days and I’m getting very bored.

Normally I would definitely be catching up with the boring washing and ironing after the Christmas onslaught - 17 people and 6 dogs make a lot of laundry especially when some of the visiting quadrupeds are allowed on their owner’s bed after the early morning walk. The washing would then move into the tumble dryer and the final step before moving into the airing cupboard would be a visit to the ironing board.

Sounds dull doesn’t it, but I needn’t have worried - there was another plan for Mrs E of The Grange thanks to a well-timed power cut. Whoopee! I could put off this drudgery for a couple of hours! And off we went to the pub for a very jolly ‘spirit of the British over adversity’ lunch.

But a couple of hours turned into a couple of days. Think about it – the lights were off, the machines did not work, the heating went off, the computers soon ran out of battery life, as did the mobile phones. Luckily we do have one normal BT phone that moved around with us so we were able to speak to the outside world and could charge the mobiles in the car where it was also possible to listen to the radio. This was a mixed blessing as it kept telling us that the roads were impassable – nothing we couldn’t see with our own eyes.

The evening approached – no television or DVDs, no reading as the light would go, so we swung into emergency entertainment mode. We had a load of half spent candles left after Christmas entertaining, so holders were dug out and groupings were laid out on all main routes around the house. We brought loads of logs in and stoked up a fire and finally found the Scrabble board. No. 4 daughter was the only one at home so we three set to and it got pretty competitive. Husband got bored with losing so went to bed while we carried on until midnight. To be honest, the cold bedroom was not very appealing...

Luckily, as we have an Aga we were able to fill loads of hotties and pinched duvets off beds so we were piled high with padding. What have we learned from this experience?

Invest in cashmere socks and hot water bottle covers from either White Company and come into the 21st century by buying battery-operated candles and whatever you do, REMEMBER THE MATCHES!!!

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