Soledad's Journal

We have had a fair bit of snow here in Belfast too. It started on Thursday night/Friday morning. As I was having my breakfast we had a brief (less than five minutes) powercut; in the evening we had a longer one, though still shorter than half-an-hour. It was long enough for me to be pleased that I had put out some tealights and tealight holders in the living room, along with a box of matches. I lit the tealights and then took one of them, in a lamp I made in wood shop many years ago before I was even a teenager, into the kitchen and dug out some proper candles to give me more light. Because it had snowed all day, while being above freezing the roads were all covered in slush, so I had a rather wet cycle-ride home from work. Therefore when I got in I turned on the gas fire that is in my new living room, and was sitting next to it warming up and drying out when the power went. I had briefly wondered if it required electricity to work, and I now know the answer is 'No'. This pleases me, especially since the gas central heating -- very nice -- doesn't actually work without the electricity. So I do have a way of keeping warm even if the power goes. :-) It is something I haven't thought of in years, but when I was a kid we used to have at least one long power cut a year after a particularly heavy blizzard; the house was heated from a wood burning stove in the cellar, without any involvement of electricity so we were always fine in that regard, but some of my family friends had pumps in their heating systems so that they didn't work when the power was out. Sorry, that may have been way more information about heating in my various homes than you are interested in! I am pleased to hear that you haven't been snowed in or suffered loss of basic services like water and heating. Hope it stays that way, and that your preparations for Easter go well and don't tire you out too much! Your biscuits sound excellent as always.