In those pre-electronic days all I needed was a candle to illuminate the music for the acoustic piano.

In the late 80's on retirement we moved to live in the mountains of North Wales, and in the depth of winter we had a power failure which lasted five days. For the first couple of days snow piled into the freezer and fridge kept the food safe, but with inoperative water pumps for the central heating it was defintiely not comfortable - or cozy. I was told that loss of power was common in this part of the world so I bought a generator which brought some relief for the next 3 days. Since then, over the following 15 years we've had about 3 power failures, none of which lasted more than a couple of hours.... I sometimes think of other things I could have bought instead of that generator. Also thought of selling it but I know darn well that if it goes we'll be getting power failures lasting for weeks. I should really remember to run it at last every month but I keep forgetting and it goes for a year or two without being tested. On one occaision it wouldn't start and I found that mice had chewed the carburetor filter to bits and it took hours to clean out. On the advice of my local garage - and they tell me this is official advice given by Mercedes (!), I've spread cat hair on the carb (and round the HT leads on the car) and no problems with mice since. All this remindes me that I really should do an oil change some time....

Ogre