Festive Blackout

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'Twas the night before Christmas - well actually it is the night before Christmas - and there's not a creature stirring all through this house apart from our good selves, gradually getting stuff together for the festive blowout tomorrow. It's approaching freezing outside, which feels like a rare occurrence these days, and it looks set for a frosty start to Christmas Day, so we've turned on one of the storage heaters for the first time since last winter, so at least the sitting room will be warm first thing. We've got a pork belly for the main meal which I'll slow roast from around eight o'clock tomorrow morning and then finish off with the roast potatoes when we get back from the pub for lunch. As to the rest, it will all fall into place as we go, I hope.

Given enough to drink and plenty of food, I don't foresee any great drama, short of the kind of power cut we experienced some thirty years ago, when we lived at Brynbella Cottage [pictured above in sunnier times: I can't find the picture of me making the gravy by candlelight in the gloom of the kitchen]. We were plunged into darkness on Christmas Eve afternoon, and we had to improvise over the cooking as we had an electric cooker. Fortunately we had a small, solid-fuel stove in the main room of the house, which had a small but usable oven and a couple of rings on top. Also, I had in those days a really useful dual-burner propane site stove from my days as a builder. So, with the aid of candles, an Aladdin paraffin lamp, and some measure of obstinacy on our part - fuelled by copious quantities of wine and cigarettes - we cooked up the Boxing Day shoulder of lamb in the small oven instead of the intended bird, and spread the rest of the cooking between the various hob rings as we could.

It turned out to be a fine enough repast, despite the slightly medieval circumstances, and the three of us had a pretty decent time of it in the end. We knew the power was not going to be restored for some considerable time, as there had been that very rare phenomenon - at least in Wales - an ice storm, which strafed the tops between Aber and the Bangor end of Bethesda, resulting in the felling of every single one of the wooden power poles along the line. Gale force winds and sub-zero temperatures militated against a rapid response to the emergency, but, given the severity of the conditions, the power guys proved up to the task in the end, and we've never seen any issues along that route since.

The irony was that Brynbella was fed electricity from across the mountain on a very old circuit, along with a small number of dwellings in Rachub and Tregarth: we were the only properties that suffered that particular outage. Anyhow, by the dawn of Boxing Day, in the full knowledge that we would be without power possibly until New Year, we bailed out to stay with family in Birmingham, along with our as yet uncooked Christmas goose. Anyhow - Merry Christmas to all for this one... 

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