|
Senior Member
|
|
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: Tralfamadore
Posts: 10,343
|
|
|
Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: Tralfamadore
Posts: 10,343
|
Ah, those were the days .....
http://century.guardian.co.uk/1970-1...106893,00.html
Quote:
Hospitals work by candle
By our own reporters
Thursday 10 December 1970
guardian.co.uk
Nationwide power cuts averaged 31 per cent yesterday, with 40 per cent in some areas, and hospitals faced their most critical 24 hours of the strike so far with staff struggling to keep going by candle and battery power.
Limited supplies from standby generators kept premature babies alive and stocks of blood usable, and allowed some essential operations to continue.
|
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6729683.stm
Quote:
Your 1970s: Strikes and blackouts
London, 1972
People improvised in the blackouts
It has to be the power cuts and the three-day week. Two abiding memories are: being a hairdresser and having clients sitting in semi-darkness with wet hair in rollers waiting for the power to come back on so they could get under the dryer and at home boiling a kettle on the open coal fire to get hot water to make up my new baby's feed!
Kate Gardiner, Perth Scotland
My abiding memory of the rolling power cuts was having to write university essays by candle light. And then three months later being charged for the repainting of my room in Halls because of the smoke "damage" in my room.
Bill Huggins, Birmingham
Then I lived in the North East near Newcastle and I vividly remember my grandmother and I walking from one shop to another in search of candles to buy. All were sold out. Innovatively butchers placed string down cartons of dripping which we bought eventually. These worked although the smell and risk of fire made them less practical than candles. As a child it was exciting to sit with the family around candles and with no TV we had no choice but to indulge in the art of conversation.
David Stoker, Guildford
|
|