Expensive embroidered tablecloths, napkins and baby clothes were among the items customers purchased at the only Hamilton store that kept regular business hours throughout the blackout that plagued the city Thursday through Saturday.

Jeremy Hartley, owner of The Irish Linen Shop, had one natural edge that allowed him to open when others could not. His shop is located in a19th Century building at the corner of Front and Queen streets and is loaded with windows that sometimes bring in so much dazzling sunlight he almost does not need artificial lighting.

?For those who don?t have the good corner that we have, shops that have just a frontage and a long deep shop, obviously toward back of shop it would have been like a cave. They couldn?t open in those circumstances. Other merchants said ?God you?re lucky to open up?,? Mr. Hartley said.

His other edge came from his five ?wonderful? staff who stuck by him throughout the outage even though technically ? without running water or working facilities ? they did not have to report for work.

?They were real troopers, they were very good about it,? Mr. Hartley said.

While the sales team were able to turn to a nearby bank with a generator for running water, heat remained a problem throughout the outage.

?Without the air conditioning the sales ladies were dripping and dissolved,? Mr. Hartley said.

With the electricity out, Mr. Hartley, as well as other traders who opened for less regular hours during the outage, continued to take credit cards by simply writing out the customer details by hand.

?80 percent of the transactions we did were credit cards and we just keyed them in manually as soon as machines were up which we did Monday morning,? Mr. Hartley said adding that several friends in retail warned him that he was taking a bit of a gamble by not processing the cards prior to the sale.

?It was gamble but on the other hand if we didn?t open we would have made nothing so I was willing to take the gamble. We just processed 60 credit card sales from Friday and Saturday which we just put though this morning and every single one went through without hitch.?

Beyond browsers his store probably saw another 50 or so cash transactions pushing overall sales figures up on Friday to ?slightly about average?.

?Even before 9.30 am on Friday when we were deciding whether to open or not we had visitors stopping and looking and asking if we were going to open so when we did open at 9.30 we had a steady stream of people right through the end of the day,? Mr. Hartley said adding that the rain brought plenty of tourists into town.

?We got lots of nice remarks from visitors saying we really appreciate you being open because we are out there looking for something to do.?

On Friday as with Saturday ? which was not quite as busy as a traditional Saturday ? customers bought everything from table and bed linens to sleepwear and Madeira tablecloths.