I have to be honest, I've never heard of the Gatineaus, but then I don't suppose a lot of people had heard of Poole or Dorset until four of us joined Arachne. I've heard of Ottawa.
The one time I cried was when I'd struggled in to work through knee high snow - it had taken me two hours instead of half an hour. When I got there they decided we'd all have to be sent home. We set out for home at 11 am, and I got home at 2 pm. The phone lines were down. DH was supposed to be bringing fish and chips in for dinner that night because I said I wasn't going to cook. He finally arrived with them cold at 10 pm - it was my birthday, and I'd spent virtually the whole day alone. But I can sympathise, having lived through a power cut that lasted three days. We were just lumped together as the south west of England, and when 'most people' had had their power restored, we hadn't. It was like nobody cared. I don't think I'd have emptied the freezer and refrigerator into a garbage bag. I kept the freezer covered with a blanket, and didn't open it for 24 hours, in case the power came on. Stuff in the refrigerator that wouldn't keep, I cooked if it could be cooked (we had a calor gas cooker as our main cooking method anyway) to keep it a bit longer, and then after the 24 hours was up, I cooked quite a lot of what had thawed from the freezer. Some we ate, and some was OK to put back in the freezer cooked when the power came back on. I reckon I lost about half the freezer contents. Last Friday morning, the power in my area of Poole was cut at 7.45 am. About 1,000 households were without power and some of us lost our phone lines too. I phoned the electricity company on my mobile, and was told the power should be back on by 11 am. I then phoned the local radio station, but they didn't announce it. They finally mentioned it in a local news bulletin at 11 am, when we'd all had power restored telling us that we'd been without power for three hours - we already knew that. I had to go to my doctor's surgery, and they were resorting to paper records. Instead of looking up on the computer what drugs I already take, it was quicker for me to tell the doctor what drugs I have. Normally when he entered the prescription for the drug I needed this time, it would have flagged it if it would react with anything I was already on. Instead he had to get out a thicker book and look it up in there. There are three shops near the surgery - a pharmacy, a supermarket and a pet superstore. The pharmacy was open, but the other two weren't because their tills weren't working, although they could crank the doors open by hand. The pharmacy was writing down what money they took and what it was for as they have a much smaller throughput of stock and money than the other two shops. The pharmacist was finding drugs by feel and memory because the dispensary is in a bit at the back with no windows (they hadn't got a torch until a customer lent them one from his car). She said the prescription I needed was available in capsule or tablet, and as she'd found the tablets first, that was what I was going to get. She was glad the doctor had already checked on compatibility with other drugs, because she hadn't been able to find her book as she hadn't used it for a few years. Fortunately we haven'yt yet got to the point where we've thrown all the paper away and rely on technology totally. Jean in Poole To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
