Sorry about the long silence.  This is a particularly busy time of the year for us, so blogging has taken a back seat.

Busy time or not, we can't control the weather and Storm Darragh caused a LOT of disruption on the Isle of Man.  Most of the beach at Peel was blown into the town - diggers are trying to shovel it all back again - landslides blocked roads and undermined buildings, and large numbers of trees were blown over bringing down electricity wires as they fell.  Loaghtan Books and the houses around it were without power for ten hours.

Being without electricity was strangely pleasant!  No work could be done of course, but then we couldn't feel guilty about not working as there was nothing we could do about it.  A log burning stove made sure that we didn't freeze and we had enough food to make sure we didn't go hungry either.  Rather to my surprise, the real bother was only having cold water to drink.  In the evening, when it's dark and, despite the stove, getting chilly, cold water is not comforting.  (We'd run out of gin, in case you're wondering.)

We weren't completely idle.  There's always the filing.

Fortunately it got dark fairly quickly so the filing had to be put back at the end of the things-to-do queue where it usually languishes.  Such a shame...

Then it was a case of reading by torch- and candlelight.

Occasionally, on expeditions to the unwarmed part of the building in search of more cold water, we could see the electricity engineers toiling by lamplight in truly dreadful conditions.  I certainly wouldn't have liked to be up a cherry picker in that wind.  At ten o'clock in the evening they connected up the last wire in the substation next door, flipped the Big Switch and, hurray, we had electricity again.  All credit to the staff of Manx Utilities who did a magnificent job.

By the way, the lady with the wind-blown hair above graces a shelter on Mooragh Promenade in Ramsey.

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