It was the summer of 1975. I was standing in a GUM department store in Moscow, Russia, wondering why these people were standing patiently in a long line.
I walked to the front of the line to see what was going on. A supply of disposable ballpoint pens had recently arrived.
The people were lining up to buy throwaway pens. It was obvious the Soviet Union was doomed.
At the time, I don’t think I made the connection between this ballpoint pen line in Soviet Russia and shortages in the UK where I lived.
Occasionally, basic necessities had been in short supply in the UK, too. One way or another, I had been insulated from those shortages.
Electricity
The previous year, in the winter of 1973/1974, coal miners went on strike in the UK. Generating stations started to run low on coal, so the country endured rolling 3-hour power outages, and a three-day work week. Outdoor Christmas lights were banned, except for a short time just before Christmas. TV broadcasts stopped at 10:30 p.m.
I was largely unaffected by the three-day work week and power problems. On the ground floor of the building where I worked there was a huge regional computing center that was exempt from rolling power outages and the short work week. It even produced enough heat from cooling the computers to heat the entire building and the building next door.
Sugar
In the summer of 1974, sugar was in short supply in the UK because of a large drop in sugar imports from the Caribbean.
My mother, having survived World War II rationing, was having none of this. She went from store to store, searching for bags of sugar. She would give me bags to lug onto the train from Newcastle upon Tyne where she lived to Manchester where I lived.
My participation in hoarding was further exacerbated by a kind woman at the checkout of the little market near my flat in Manchester. Whenever I popped in for a can of beans, or whatever, she would retrieve a bag of sugar from under the checkout counter which I surreptitiously put into my bag. I was too polite to decline her act of kindness.
Toilet Paper
It wasn’t only sugar that was in short supply in the the UK in 1974. There was also a national shortage of toilet paper.
Again, my mother would spend her days in search of overlooked toilet rolls, and I had to lug them to Manchester.
Eventually, I had plentiful supplies of TP and sugar hoarded in my little Manchester flat.