Surviving When The Lights Went Out

I looked at Dad, he looked at me.

"I wasn't running away..." he said looking slightly ashamed and tugging at his long hair that actually made him look much younger.

"I know Dad," I said, "Look, you were doing what you needed to get through, I know that."

"Yeah, didn't do anyone any harm, developed a taste for game and wildfowl, mushrooms, and tea without milk."

"No problem," I said, "You're losing your touch a bit though Dad."

"What do you mean?"

"Ronnie Regan found you mate, you must be slipping."

"Yeah," he said stretching against his cramped sleeping position since early that morning, "Wasn't expecting company and must have let my standards slip. Bastard followed my tracks right to where I was lying up."

"Perhaps it's time to settle down again mate."

"Yeah, well that's easier said than done isn't it, can't get my pension for another five years..."

"Then ring Grandma," I said quite simply. Grandma Hart was extremely well off and Hart's Croft was only one of the couple of dozen or so houses she owned and rented out to a select few friends and family with this being one of them. My clever Grandma knew that this was probably the only one that Dad would want to live in, being away from the world and spitting distance to the training areas and hills, valleys, beacons and forests he'd trained in since he'd joined the army more than twenty years before.

"I can't settle down to..."

"Dad, you're in a croft that no bugger can find even on a good day, what's the difference between this and a bivi-bag, or God forbid a bloody tarp and a sleeping bag?"

"Suppose you're right," he said. "Don't tell your mother."

And so we settled down.

-

I drove to the local town and bought groceries and with the benefit of a mobile phone signal rang Grandma. She took my bank details and paid a weekly allowance for Dad and me and we lived quite well, working the garden and a small field we attacked with a rotavator from the tool barn then planted, and the local woodland for the various game that it could provide, with Dad using his gas-powered repeater air rifle which was great fun. After that he bought a hi-powered target crossbow which we used - not sure how legally - on the roe deer and wild boar that we would stalk when they made their way through our woodland and occasionally into our meadows -- it was like being a kid again.

Dad seemed a lot happier and had a couple of days in London staying at the Army and Navy Club and getting a hair cut, returning late and being a bit secretive. He gave me a mess of cash and told me that a long weekend in London wouldn't do me any harm either. I went and, on my return, realised he'd been buggering around in the barn for a while and I knew not to ask what or why.

I'd gone home and collected my clothes and my laptop and camera so I could start work again telling Mum I was staying at the Croft and 'writing' -- not mentioning Dad.

Despite his previously reduced rough sleeper status Dad never seemed to be short of money and with Grandma's permission installed loads of solar panels and even a phone and broadband cable. Doing the work ourselves we upgraded and reproofed the barns and bought at first a big chest freezer for the amount of game we were catching then a walk-in, Dad was fucking loaded!

I made wine and brewed beer and I often found myself sitting up with Dad and talking late into the night about some of the shit he'd had to deal with over his years in uniform and sometimes when he wasn't and with his permission started to write it down.

"For publication and profit?" he said with some interest.

"Of course," I said.

"Right, let's do this."

I started to question him about the bits I remembered - Northern Ireland, Central America, Iraq then lots and lots of Afghanistan and other places that the British government had sent him but never really screamed from the rooftops.

We both found that this purging of his soul was quite beneficial for him; but for me it was the amazing knowledge he had about survival and 'wild food', so much so I started a second word document in the vein of one of those 'outdoor survival books', taking pictures of the plants and fungi he'd found, then the traps he was setting up, the animals he caught and how he would butcher and prepare them for cooking based on whatever tools he'd chosen or had made. From the stag he'd brought down with a single bolt, a wild boar similarly, then it was snared rabbit, air-rifled partridge, grouse, pheasant, woodpigeon, even the occasional duck that would land on one of our ponds.

We had an amazing summer.

That autumn it was a delight to welcome Grandma to the place for dinner of a terrine of wild caught rabbit, grouse, partridge and wood pigeon, with fresh venison stalked, butchered then hung three days before with vegetables we'd grown in the acres of land around us.

It was with some pride that Dad and I showed her the final proofs and letter from the Publishers that had jumped at War hero and Adventurer Major Jeremy Hart's life story then his survival manual/cookbook which had me as joint author. Thanks to the pre-advertising and serialisations in the Sunday broadsheets they both flew off the shelves as those things tend to, and we split the profit.

I was more connected to my Dad at that point than I ever was before, so much so that I noticed his distraction, his gradual weakness, his loss of weight and condition and the very evident and almost constant pain that didn't respond to drugs. Eventually he told me about his illness that had been diagnosed three, possibly four years before and he'd been fighting all alone until two years before when he'd been told they had done all they could and he should do all of things he wanted to do and prepare. He left the army with a view to raising maximum cash for his family for the time he was no longer there.

Hating this illness he couldn't fight and was beyond his control and seeing the hurt it would bring to the family he worshipped, he came up with his plan. It was a bit hit and miss and the first thing that happened was he managed to alienate his wife, his mother, and Deana and me, just because the silly bastard wanted to provide for us all, yet still go out on his terms and not bring pain to his family.

He'd taken on a large insurance policy and started to do stupid and dangerous jobs with no fear of death -- this accounted for those high-paying, short-term contracts that ranged from riding super-tankers to fight off Somali pirates, body-guarding Russian Oligarchs and South and Central American 'farmers' then finally the biggest, baby-sitting the dictator and his appalling wife and undertaking gunfights to enable him (not her) to get away.

Incarcerated by the new popular government, he'd started arguments in his Third World prison hoping to go out fighting but it wasn't to be, he was far too good in a scrap and everyone knew it, his previous local security colleagues locked up with him worshipped and protected him.

Once home and with his insurance policy in mind he'd taken to the woods, with a view to a non-suicide death 'by misadventure', but he was just to good at his job and his new Spartan existence had seemed to keep his illness at bay for a short time at least.

Once purged of his final secret and admittance of his approaching death he swore me to secrecy - so of course on the next and final trip to the publishers I gave him an extra pain killer he needed to get him back to the Croft in comfort, but as he dozed I drove him at speed the shortish distance to the house in Shropshire we'd shared and that I grew up in.

Mum was just getting home from work and Deana was even there. Mum took one look at his gaunt and obviously dying frame and dragged him inside where he broke down and apologised to 'his girls' for his stupidity and how he had meant it to help them and begged for their forgiveness, and it was there on the wide leather sofa that he died two weeks later in his sleep, in the warmth of his home once more and his head on the lap of his first and only love.

-

We all dealt with our loss in different ways, I think it was harder for Mum and Deana who had been really hurt by the stupid but proud old sod who should just have told us all when he first knew and we all could have dealt with it and helped him. But saying that he probably would have died sooner.

After his regimental funeral I went back to the place I'd started to call home, back to Hart's Croft, back to Grandma's hidden little gem in the woods and my testament to Dad, his second wild food cookbook.

All that time I spent at my old house I never once mentioned to Deana that I knew she'd been to the Croft with someone, at least not that close to the death of her much-loved Daddy.

A few weeks after my return to the woods I was surprised to hear the door knocking and It was Grandma, her large white Mercedes 230 SL that was older than me parked next to my Golf GTI, there for her yearly inspection I figured and pleased to find me in residence.

"It's so good to know that this place is earning a living James," she said, "I'm so pleased that I've eh... well I've given it to you."

"What?" I said idiotically.

"You've always loved it here James, more so than your Mum and Dad and sister for that matter," she sat down at the kitchen table, "So I've contacted The Land Registry and the local council and signed it over to you along with the 200 or so acres that goes with it, the rent for some of the fields is the money that now goes into your bank account. Don't worry," she said with a smile, "I'll be giving that place in Devon to your sister as soon as I know she won't just sell it and blow the money on more clothes and not working for a living."

I made tea and sandwiches for us both and Grandma thanked me for my care of Dad and bringing him in from the cold and his self-inflicted misery, something she doubted anyone else could have done.

"You inherited your grandfather's kindness," she said to me as we ate the fruitcake she'd brought with her -- I was a huge fan of fruit cake, it was almost an entire food group to my way of thinking - "your sister has you father's outward boundness and drive to take on the world and your Mother's drive for perfection and a good party; while you are actually kind, probably one of the nicest, kindest people I know. It's a blessing that you answered the phone that day and not your Mum."

Dad's pension and the insurance pay-out was going to my Mum as he had always planned as well as the returns on some of the invested 'blood money' he'd taken working for the oligarchs, drug dealers and dictators, along with a letter to her explaining and apologising for his behaviour and how she was and always would be the love of his life.

I was working on the second cookbook using the last of Dad's notes and voice recordings as the winter approached and the money still came in along with income from some of the other jobs I'd done.

Initially I loved my solitude and my independence; even without the encouragement of my Dad I was getting up at first light and foraging, the air rifle one day, crossbow the next. There was quite a surplus so with only thoughts of not having to go shopping in the local town or nearby city, I bought lots in. Tins with long shelf lives, sacks of flour, oats, pasta, rice, dried fruit, milk powder, that kind of thing neatly stacked in one of the big dry pest-proofed sheds around the yard.

Going for more self-sufficiency, I installed more solar panels in an open field deeper into the property surrounded by woodland that all belonged to me, dozens of the things and I was being paid by the national grid for the power I generated over what I used for my place, but the contractor had installed an 'off' switch that would divert to my property and my big storage batteries.

I was well stocked because while I'd finally started planning my year out, to head for the States the following spring, my purpose had changed, I was;t going to any festivals, but to see if there was an American version of my survival cookbook in me somewhere including the more openly 'prepper' elements and I trawled YouTube and the rest of the internet for ideas.

I was going to play around with canned and dried foods and see what I could turn out over the winter and spring. I was even preparing some ideas to see if I couldn't get an advance from my publisher -- hell, I'd even started writing some notes on taking a couple of cameras and a friend and filming my tour, if only for YouTube or a podcast, and I started to experiment with the food and wrote down what I liked, and sometimes what I didn't like.

-

Christmas came and went, with Deana staying with friends and me at Mum's but the distraction of the holiday season did little to address the worsening financial situation nationally and it was now getting quite significant, but fortunately I was extremely confident I could ride it out so long as it didn't stretch out of 'months' and into 'years'.

It started as fuel shortages due to political and religious problems in the Middle East. Those people that boldly said that the United Kingdom would sail through these minor difficulties had been wrong but in a flurry of patriotic bluster the worriers were declared as 'unpatriotic' and told to 'come on board and get behind the government for the big win', as if being British and knowing the second and third verse of 'God save the Queen' was a universal panacea to a multitude of ills, including starvation.

The government ministers that hadn't actually caused the problems but had done little to address them and continued to insist they were 'minor' did quite well and along with their millionaire friends moved their money off-shore for safe keeping, while the average person in the street that had voted for them couldn't and didn't.

It started as fuel became first expensive then rationed then unobtainable. As a direct knock-on food prices inflated beyond everyone's expectation and bank balances. Fresh meat, fruits and vegetables were rotting in the backs of trucks and containers sat in commercial ports because fuel supplies were strictly limited, even to the trucks delivering to supermarkets.

The person in the street was extremely cross about the whole thing, and as so often happens in the first world, what started out as a peaceful protest became an excuse to riot, and what had started as a hunger march soon became an excuse to steal iPhones, laptops and widescreen TV's, burn shops and cars then attack the police.

With the lack of fuel and fuel transport the non-nuclear power stations went flat and with it the national grid, and barring hospitals and schools the lights started to go out intermittently.

The person in the street lost access to daytime TV, then evening TV and worse still the phones and the internet. Then the lights went out for good - Freezers stopped freezing, electric cookers stopped cooking, gas boilers that needed electricity for central heating stopped working just as the winter bit.

The country got very cold and very, very hungry. Charity kitchens opened but only open to particular people. A nation used to open consumerism hated the idea of rationing, and everyone had what they considered a very valid reason why they needed more than their neighbour so the nation got very angry and a bit jealous. Pet rabbits, guinea pigs, chickens, even racing pigeons would disappear from back gardens and then even cats stopped coming home. Being England the outcry over horses killed and butchered in fields and stable yards was huge and would have been front page if the presses hadn't stopped working.

A few national radio stations were still running and the Prime Minister told us to stand together and be strong, but this wasn't enough and news reports of the nation's leader and cabinet colleagues suited and in plastic aprons in inner city soup kitchens smiling as they dished out overlarge portions of food to their specially chosen customers did nothing to ease anyone's hunger nor their anger once it was reported that the politicians were on-site for less than an hour then rushed away to Whitehall where the already subsidised restaurants were now free.

Sat in my isolated croft and listening to all of this, I knew that my trip to America wasn't going to be on the cards for some time to come, and then as it got worse I worried that I had no contact with my Mum, Sister, Grandma or any of my mates.

I couldn't really complain though. I had fresh water supplied by a spring that never froze, was connected to mains drainage and had a huge tank almost full of fuel oil for heating and cooking that was well bunded and concealed.

My lights and heating stayed on thanks to my field of solar panels only really visible from the air and paid for with the last of the money (so my Dad said) earned from a man now convicted by international tribunal of tyranny, murder, rape, embezzlement and every other conceivable crime against humanity but living in some comfort in an Arab state with almost all of his money -- less what he'd given to my Dad.

As the Radio broadcasts became more serious and spoke of bad times ahead and the queues at the half empty food banks, I started to think about my large supplies. I wanted desperately to contact Mum and Deana and get them to come here but I didn't have enough petrol to get there and back since the phones went down.

OK, my only recent delivery of a couple of pallets of food I'd ordered had been months before but the last thing I wanted was someone turning up to my place in the night with all their mates and helping themselves, I closed my curtains and turned down the lights. This was actually stupid as I was pretty much invisible to the outside world.

I took action after I noticed someone behind me slowing down to watch me as I drove into my access road after a fruitless search for petrol and I thought on how I might conceal the small track from prying eyes. While I lived miles out in the country the now hungry and panicking general public sick of surviving on the 700 calories a day ration (when they could get it) had taken to violent looting quite quickly. That wasn't just supermarkets and electrical retailers, it spread to anyone that seemed to have anything and murders and other violent crimes became so common place that the media stopped reporting them.

That night I walked down to the road and started to construct a bit of a soil bank along the line of the highway verge. It got taller and taller each night eventually giving me something I could conceal six of grandma's one metre long green plastic garden planters into which I transplanted some of the local greenery during the day and these were laid at an angle so anyone diving along the small B-road without any local knowledge would miss the entrance all together. It was wet enough that I never had to water them either. In three nights of work the access road to the croft was concealed and invisible from all but the most intrusive pedestrian.

And that was where my hope lay - there was no reason for anyone to walk on that road, it led to another small town that was some miles away and uphill quite significantly, and probably had no more food supplies that the rest of the country.

Looking at my stores of food and fuel, I was extremely confident that I could last a good six or seven months, possibly much more and get into well in the summer in some comfort when, if the radio was to be believed things would be OK again - international bills paid, petrol and diesel off ration and civilisation restored.

If I harvested some of the many tonnes of fallen wood in and around my croft, and my fields and woodlands, this would go well into the autumn, more if I used my axe or the noisy chain saw. I was also well trained in catching my supper and preparing it.