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...plant fruit trees, grow vegetables and when it gets bad head for the nearest longbarrow - with or without candles...
There's something very satisfying about lighting candles and the fire in an energy-less (but otherwise) comfortable house. Listening to the old clock ticking and chiming on the bookcase. When the lights finally did come back on there was something a bit garish about it all - too bright and slick. A house with no power for a couple of hours is playtime though; a couple of days without heating and hot water and you soon begin to feel quite miserable. The gas cooker works without electricity so could have kept going for a while but, when the gas finally runs out, what then? There's no going back to a time and place with no hot baths, clean clothes and a reasonable degree of comfort; actually we don't have to. The technology to sustain a reasonable lifestyle is already here - we just don't implement it, choosing to live on borrowed (fast) time.*

* Climate Change - Britain under Threat. Presented by David Attenborough on BBC1 this evening from 8-9 o'clock.

There's something very satisfying about lighting candles and the fire in an energy-less (but otherwise) comfortable house.

And candles have come a long way since they were romantic but spluttery and messy and smokey.
I could supply you with a gel candle that would burn for ten days, fill your house with the scent of a hundred wild flowers and would never need attention or start smoking as it has a self-trimming wick.

A few of those, and a clockwork radio, and the collapse might be quite tolerable.

Don't worry I've gone off the idea of living in a longbarrow, after watching Ray Mear's Wild food and those sour berries and grey sludges of starch, he has convinced me that most of use would'nt be able to nourish ourselves on the meagre pickings of the english countryside, unless we opt for a carnivorous diet..