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The effect of a power cut is often large – and can be extremely large, as we saw last year after the lightning strike – but the cause is usually damage to a comparatively small area of infrastructure. This means the number of people required to repair it isn't so enormous that we're likely to...

I can't see why there would be, unless we get very high winds again – and then the lines would be repaired asap, as always. We all depend on the power grid, so it'd be a top priority job.

Are you okay to have bottled gas in your flat? After Ronan Point, even mains gas was (and remains) banned in the low-rise blocks where we grew up. I guess the regulations will vary from one area to another, though. In the power cuts of the 1970s, we used to put candles inside a clay flowerpot...

PWME do seem to respond to challenges in very different ways. For instance, some of us have relapsed after a 'flu vaccine, whilst others have it every year with no problem at all. Some pick up every cold that goes around; some almost never get them; some seem to have the same number of colds...

They're hoping to develop a 'pregnancy test' type device. May not happen fast enough to stop this virus spreading very widely, but the technology developed in response to it could be very useful for future ones.

Too tired to listen music at the mo, but that artwork is fab!

I think part of the strategy is to try and slow it down so that not everyone gets it at the same time, in which case the health service just wouldn't be able to look after folk who become severely ill. People here are for the most part following the advice to carry on as normal, as there's only...

So autism and chronic pain are psychiatric disorders now? :banghead:

They'll faint when they read the stats on lost disability benefits tribunals, then!

:rofl::rofl::rofl: In other news, people are having to learn to live without loo roll:

I took a different track – now can't stop singing it to 'Come on, Eileen'. :laugh:

I doubt it! (I was being facetious in response to @Mij's post – sorry.) A friend saw a bloke leaving a supermarket with two trollies of loo roll a couple of days back. No food as far as she could see, just an 18-month supply of tissue in case he got a virus that doesn't even make you sneeze...

I've got the runs, so I've just ordered 44 bottles of calamine lotion...

You just gave me a shudder, remembering the smell when the assistants in Woolworths wiped down the glass counters with meths, which were at face level for kids! I don't think I've had a whiff of it since the 1960s. Loved the smell of surgical spirit, though, which we were doused in when our...

My mate and I have just paid the balance on our (UK) birdwatching trip in May. We're assuming the same as always: unless one of us is unwell, we're going. We're staying in a rural property set in an acre of garden, so if we developed symptoms during our stay, it wouldn't be hard to stay away...

They sometimes negotiate with welfare advisors too. They really shouldn't be pressuring people to make an instantaneous decision like some dodgy double glazing salesman, though, especially if the person doesn't have access to an advocate who understands the caselaw. Ideally, people should either...

My solution at my old house was to ask my home help to change the beds in both bedrooms, and I'd sleep in one for a week and then move to the other. The spare room in the new house is tiny and where I keep my indoor wheelchair (and piles of other stuff that hasn't yet got a proper place), so I...

As far as I'm aware, no-one's saying that there's a problem at the moment – I might have missed something, though. One of the difficulties with patient stockpiling is that, even if it's only done to a modest degree, it risks creating shortages that wouldn't otherwise have occurred. I'm guessing...

Yep, along with the fact that the 14% figure will probably change as more work is done. It could be far fewer people...or many more.

Yes! We used to pester our mum for that suspiciously bright orange fizz. :laugh: (We never got it, except one time my dad bought it by accident when he was sent out for the shopping.) Some slightly odd news on its namesake the virus this morning, in that 14% people who're apparently fully...