Crisis & Adversity!!

In Duton Hill we didn't have underground electricity lines as it was open countryside, we still had overhead power cables.  This of course meant that in the event of storms or strong winds, torrential rain, heavy snow etc we were susceptible to power cuts and these were fairly frequent.  Power cuts in a pub create their own special problems.  The till would go off so we reverted to the old paper & pencil adding up method.  The coolers which the beer lines came through from the cellar also went off, so lagers and cider warmed up quickly and everything in the kitchen was powered by electricity so it meant no food but generally a power-cut brought out the best in people, the stoic side of them.
And if the power was off at the pub, then the whole village would be out.  If power was off for any length of time then the people would all come up to the pub for some company and social interaction so we always did quite well out of such a situation.  On one occasion we had Simon & Julia (from 2 doors down) and Shaggy & Stella carry a trivial pursuit board, mid game, up to the pub.  They'd been having a game when the power went off, gave it 10 minutes to come back on and then thought, right let's take it up the pub and so they did!

But usually one of the first to turn up was Melanie.  She used to make me laugh as you could almost time her arrival after everything went off.  She loved seeing everyone piling into the pub in what she named 'a time of crisis & adversity', from then all such occasions as this were known as times of Crisis & Adversity among most of the regulars and Mel became a bit of a village legend when the power went off.
Mel would sit at the end of the bar drinking half after half of bitter and end up going home at closing time somewhat tipsy hailing the beauty of 'crisis & adversity'.


In the cold, rainy, dreary Autumn of 1997 Karen, Mel and I were sitting in The Three Horseshoes having a drink together and a good old moan about how crap the weather was as we gazed out of the window and watched the rain running down the middle of the car-park.  I thought it the perfect time to bring up the subject of holidays, suggesting we should all go on holiday together, not really expecting them to go for one reason or another.
I added I was obviously thinking that it would have to be a holiday in the UK because Karen always holidayed with her doggies.  Karen looked at me like I was bonkers, "sod the dogs" she exclaimed "let's go to the sun!!".
And with those immortal words the girlie holiday's were born.

Over the years the 'crisis & adversity' thing became the phrase for many an accident or mishap and on the girlie holidays, they were many, many moments, mostly connected to me and my ridiculously daft body which is liable to do the oddest things at the most inopportune times :o)