Winter has arrived

Perhaps I tempted fate in my previous posts about the exceptionally mild autumn, but we paid for it this weekend when Storm Arwen hit North East Scotland. We lost power at about 4 pm on Friday - just when it was getting dark - and never regained it until 8:25 am on Sunday morning. It wasn't a lot of fun but there are people in Aberdeenshire still waiting to be reconnected - some of them have been told it'll be Wednesday before this happens. This is what our energy distributor is currently displaying on their web site:

They may have reconnected 98,000 customers but there's still another 24,000 without power in what is the coldest spell by far since last winter. We were fairly fortunate - one little gem was Jo deciding recently that we should buy a little gas camping stove in case the Russians turned off supplies of gas to the West, as has been suggested in the media. This allowed us to have a hot meal - brisket and potatoes, washed down with lashings of wine - on Friday night, when, incidentally, I was due to host another Zoom Headbang. It was warm enough in bed overnight but pretty parky in the morning. No wireless, no internet and not even a mobile phone signal so we decided to walk over to the golf club for a coffee and to use their internet access. No such luck - they had some lights on but not enough power so we walked round the corner to the Douglas where coffees were available but like everywhere else in town, the internet was down, which also meant that card payments couldn't be accepted - only cash. Just one small problem - all the ATM's were out of action so unless you happened to be one of the few people who still carry cash (and we were) you were out of luck.

So back home we trudged. The next move was to jump in the car - nice and warm in there eventually - and drive to somewhere that might have a mobile phone signal to pick up any important messages, including updates from SSEN about when the power would be restored. We eventually found a spot at the highest point in Banchory at the top of Lawson Avenue. We were far from alone as other drivers with the same issue came and went. The news from SSEN was not great - it was going to be 10 pm before power was restored, so we just had to grin and bear it. We have a pretty looking gas fire in our front room but it hardly throws out any heat. We had to sit as close to it as we could and get blankets out to keep ourselves warm. Obviously, no TV to watch, but no radio either as none of our portables had batteries. During daylight, at least it's possible to read but once the gloom started to fall mid-afternoon, that was it. The next problem to hit Banchory was:

Fortunately, supplies to our house were not affected but we had decided to go out for a meal (and a heat) on Saturday evening, walking along to the Douglas where we were met with closed doors and a sign saying they had to close as they, like half of Banchory it seems, had no water supply. We then tried our local Indian restaurant:

Luck at last - it was open - and busy - and it had water - but again no card payments were possible. We counted what hard cash we had left between the two of us and figured we didn't have enough to sit in but we could manage a takeaway OK - so that's what we did. Back home - more wine as we cosied up to our little fire again:

We went to bed early again that night, hoping to be awakened at some point by the power coming back on - but it never did, so breakfast in the morning was quick cups of tea/coffee on the gas stove and back under the covers where we sat until, lo and behold, at 8:25 am the lights came on! I powered up our router and we were able to access the internet again. The first message I came across was another text apology from SSEN to say that they wouldn't be able to restore power again until 10 pm that evening - eh? Anyway all seems well now and we're (mostly) back to our daily routines. We are being told, however, to avoid all bar essential travel, so Jo had to miss out on her planned trip to Drumoak this morning for coffee with her pal Anne.