Sheffield history: 1973 was when we were plunged into darkness - and murder in dark was our entertainment

I’m reminded of this with the ongoing talk of the terrible forthcoming rises in home energy fuel prices.

It scares me now as it did back then when I was a child.

When growing up in the 1970s as a child, I was then very aware of the cost of heating and lighting a house.

Many of my age will remember the ‘plink’ of the lights going out and having to ask mom or dad for money for the meter.

Then going into the spooky, webbed cellar in the dark with a candle, or torch if you were lucky.

Sometimes mom and dad weren’t in and you wouldn’t have light or gas until they came home.

I also remember huddling around the gas fire, and seeing the flame gradually fade to nothing, and the room got cooler.

I was always wary of leaving any lights on. As young as I was, I understood this was running down the meter.

Even when going to bed, and being scared of the dark, I would still turn the light off, run and dive under the covers, not emerging until daylight.

We really had a sense of the value of heating and light those days, as we do now.

I was sometimes there when the man came to empty our meter – I remember the piles of silver coins on the table being counted out.

I was surprised when he would give my mom quite a bit back too – a rebate.

In 1973, when the coal miners took industrial action against the government over pay, Prime Minister Edwards Heath stood his ground.

This caused great difficulties for our coal burning power stations, thus causing issues for industry and homes nationwide.

This led Heath to bring in drastic measures to ensure coal stocks were maintained.

At this time, although I didn’t know why, we at home suffered power cuts on a regular basis.

Firms and factories went on a three day week to conserve coal stocks.

The lights went off, well before bed time, and the candles came out – if you were lucky as candles were also in short supply.

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Evening entertainment for us as children was very limited then, even by those standards.

We had a TV but only had two channels – BBC One and BBC Two. I didn’t see ITV until I was 11.

So in some respects we were lucky not to be missing much on the box.

Clearly games consoles, internet, tablets and other devices dependent on electricity weren’t even on the horizon then.

We had to be a little more inventive then – murder in the dark was game we played. It was, after all, dark.

Now we enter an era of high fuel costs, although the government hasn’t imposed power cuts.

We move into a time when self imposed black out and colder rooms become necessary to save money.

Has gas and electricity, again become a luxury accessible to some, but not all?