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the British mainland and even from the continent of Europe where waves of triffids spreading from the Russian steppes drove human survivors westward until their backs were to the Atlantic.
        In Western Europe the most sizeable communities were based in the Channel Islands, the Isle of Wight and the larger Scottish Isles, while the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic formed the northernmost community. Mainland Britain and Europe were largely no-go areas. Triffids extended in vast ambulatory forests, choking open fields and city streets alike.
        From exploratory flights and careful monitoring of radio broadcasts we learned of a few small communities hanging on by the skin of their teeth on the mainland, permanently besieged by the triffid armies. Besides the Western European groups, there were other communities throughout the world, all as fragile as one another. Many were lost to the triffids, natural disasters, disease, famine - even, ludicrously, to wars that pitted man against man.
        The great bulk of the world's population died in those first few months of Year One of the catastrophe. It was estimated that the entire population of the globe now might not number above one million men, women and children. Perhaps a third of those were unsighted.
        In the light of such a dizzying drop in the population it was no wonder, then, that our island council placed such a priority on repopulation. After all, those first few hundred who had made their home on the Isle of Wight all those years ago must have been rattling round its one hundred and forty-seven square miles like the proverbial pea in an oil drum.
        Women of childbearing age were encouraged to have as many children as possible. Half a dozen was considered the minimum. But Mother Nature herself would often override with ease any plans made by humans.
        My mother, for instance, lost the ability to have any more children with the birth of my youngest sister by Caesarean. (This left my mother and father with a total of three offspring.)
        The most radical initiative was the creation of the Mother Houses. Even though I'd been born on the mainland, I'd come to the island as a very young boy. So I was really a child of the colony myself, didn't care a fig about the morals and social conventions of the Old World, and didn't find the idea of the Mother Houses at all strange.
        But when the idea was mooted more than twenty years ago there was outrage; many left the island to join communities on Jersey and Guernsey that adhered to what some considered a stricter moral code. Simply, the plan was that unsighted women of childbearing age would be invited (some said coaxed, others claimed coerced) into becoming professional mothers.
        Initially, the project stipulated that a sighted man would have a 'harem' of unsighted women as well as a sighted wife.
        Uproar!
        But the idea didn't go away.
        Instead, under the guidance of 'Matrons' (these were older women, mainly unsighted and all above childbearing age) professional mothers took over many of the larger country houses. They made it quite clear that these would be governed democratically, yet with strictly no involvement by men - administrative involvement, that was: human biology hadn't yet reached a stage where the female of the species could reproduce without needing at least the bare necessities from the male.
        In a nutshell, Mother Houses functioned as self-governing communities of women who were dedicated to producing babies fathered by men they chose. Soon the Mother Houses overflowed with new babies. Buildings nearby were converted to nurseries, then, as the children grew, yet more buildings were turned over to schools. Mother Houses, without a doubt, were here to stay. And I must say I rather liked them. They were always cheerful places, if a bit noisy. And they produced happy, robust children who counted every child in the Mother House