Electricity

Although I was born a pretty long time ago, I've always had electricity at hand.  One set of grandparents had limited service with some rooms only lit by paraffin - I can still recall the smell it sent out when you went in there.  Mostly we had just a couple of "power points," and of course the hanging center light cords.  But it was there for us and it was only during the latter stages of the war that we experienced "power cuts."  Then you'd be plunged into darkness.
It doesn't happen too much these days, but up in the mountains we get power outages as everything is above ground on poles and wind and snow will take out transformers.
The other day, while composing something amazingly important on the computer, the power went.  And it didn't come back for a couple of hours.  There is nothing more annoying under these circumstances than to wander into a room looking for something and putting on the light switch and nothing happens.  One feels such a fool.
A couple of Christmases ago we had a power outage that lasted for a full day.  We had our 15-year old grandson with us and his frustration at not being able to access his electronic games was something to see.  But grandma produced that wonderful standby - board games.  We survived, but it gave us all a greater appreciation of one of modern life's necessities.