Power!?

Today has been an interesting day. It started at 8am with us realising that the alarm had not gone off. The kids needed to be 6 miles away in 4 minutes time to catch the school bus. If not, I'd have to drive all the way to the secondary to drop one off, 20 miles, and then all the way back to the junior to drop another,  20 miles more, before I could get back home which is 8 miles. Luckily, Ann would only have 7 breakfasts to cook as 4 residents had got up early to climb Scafell. When we did get down stairs it turned out that the rain had put off the 4 and Ann now had 11 breakfasts to cook. Of course, the first customers wanted to check out whilst the last breakfast was being cooked.

By 11am, when it was time to open the bar, we'd just about regrouped enough to operate without killing something. The kids were at school, breakfasts eaten and guests checked out. What could go wrong?

Alan, the barman, had a day off today. But that was OK because it has been a quiet daytime. I even got time to lift some Daffodil bulbs so I can rearrange the flowerbeds next winter. Around 5:30 I got washed up so I could prep some sardines and bone out a roe dear hunch deer haunch. After all we were expecting more for dinner than we've had all week. Half way through doing the prep the lights went out. Bummer, or perhaps words a little stronger.

We are on the end of a very long cable that feeds 11,000V up this remote valley. Although considering this, the power supply is generally pretty good, but it does seem to fail rather more regularly than we'd like. Having several important customers booked in for dinner it was really not the sensible option to close the kitchen, however tempting it might be. Luckily, despite having zero kilowatts of electricity available we still have a surplus of 47Kg propane cylinders at our disposal. Sadly, no kitchen extract system.

After sweating out more than my daily intake of beer we managed to feed all our very appreciative customers. Taking plates out of a hot cupboard that seemed cooler than the kitchen did make me feel like climbing in with the plates. But after suffering many power failures, that was probably our best handled, and most profitable power cut ever.

The power came back on just long enough for the staff to wash up before United Utilities or Power Gen or EDF or whoever the hell it is today, decided to turn it off again so they could "reset all the sub stations". With everybody vacated or gone to bed, Ann and I enjoyed the candle lit peace.

Ann's head torch was essentail for finding things in the fridge. We felt that putting candles in a fridge that wasn't powered up might just help to heat it up still further.

You might also note that Ann is enjoying a couple of Bailey's, her favourate. For me Westmalle Dubbel draft, the last keg it would seem, must do a post on that.