With winter power cuts a possibility amid energy crisis, some Britons remember them as ‘very ordinary’
When Judy Young first saw the government’s response to concerns over power supplies could be potential blackouts this winter, her first thought was: “Thank God I haven’t got young children any more.”
“It was difficult being in a blackout with young children who you can never take your eyes off even for a second, especially not if you’ve got candles all over the place,” she says.“The house was freezing and it was dangerous with such small children to have any kind of oil heater which they could burn their fingers on.”
Chris Lilly, a 69-year-old retired teacher, remembers experiencing a power cut while watching Live Like Pigs by John Arden at the Royal Court theatre as a drama student in 1973. “Everything was going swimmingly, and then the lights cut out, and that’s when we had to turn on our torches,” Lilly recalls. “It was kind of like blitz spirit.”Although the thought of having to rely on torches while at the theatre may seem bizarre nowadays, at the time it was nothing unusual for Lilly. “The blackouts were very matter of fact, it was very ordinary,” he says. “There were power cuts, and you were told when the power cuts would be in the newspaper, so you could accommodate to that.
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