Skip to main content

I Surrender

My extremities, they feel the chill

Always have done, always will.

Frozen fingers, frozen toeses.

 And, so too, my little nose is. 

Thankfully, then, one of the presents I received for my recent birthday was these…

Adorable, sheepskin slippers. They are solid, fluffy, bouncy and deep red in colour. They make me feel like a Christmas elf when I wear them. For the last three days, my toeses have been warm, my feet rosie pink instead of ink-blotch blue. I should have bought a pair 57 years ago. 

Today is the first day in ages that my face has felt cold. Today, then, is the day we have capitulated and activated the central heating. Until now we’ve been layering up with jumpers, tights (not Andy), thick socks, our massive fleece hoodies and blankets because heating means bills and bills are going up, up and up. Especially when you are an oil-heating household and have to prop up the likes of oil producers like B.P and Shell, poor things with their barely-there meagre profits. (That was irony. Or bitter sarcasm. Probably both.)

But I’ve had enough now. I am a cold mortal. Our house is an old house - “I’m 170 years old, you know. I remember when ALL this was fields. Oh, it still is….I remember when ALL this was younger fields…”  - and was starting to feel too cold, too - and was that a hint of damp I was beginning to detect in the air? Andy commented that the bath towels weren’t drying out properly, either, not like back in the days of the Great Heatwave of Summer ‘22 when they’d dry out quicker than one could say ‘flame thrower.’ Come to think about it, one didn’t really need a bath towel to dry oneself - one merely stood on the bath mat and let evaporation do the job. 

Some tinkering with the magic wi-fi thermostat, then, and away we go! I can almost hear the house saying, ‘Thank chuff for THAT!’ 

We have always been careful with our heating bills, both for fiscal and environmental reasons. We are not ‘leave it on all day and all night at 20 plus degrees’ people. An hour and a half in the morning, four and a half hours in the evening, and it switches itself off as if by magic when 18 degrees is reached. If it’s especially chilly during the day, I’ll crank up the wood burner. That’ll do for us. Keeps us happy, healthy, ambient and solvent.

I’m too old now, to fret about being cold. Being cold makes me feel miserable. And if I was to be mown down by a runaway cow tomorrow and went to the Great Beyond, I would be thoroughly p*seed off that I hadn’t enjoyed being warm today.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I got almost the exact same slippers! They are fab. Our general heat systems here where I live in an interesting living experiment. The heating is generally through vents in the floor. Those heating vents are ALWAYS situated where it is the ONLY place to put a sofa and thereby significantly decrease the efficiency of the heating system. Wood stoves are the way to go. I simply love a wood stove. The kind of heat it produces is far superior to any other heat in my opinion.
KJ
6 November 2022 at 05:32
Denise said…
I’m with you on wood stoves. Once ours is going it can heat the whole ground floor and half way up the stairs. Nothing nicer than cosying up next to a proper fire in Winter.
6 November 2022 at 15:54
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Frosted Dawn Enigma

The decorators are in at the moment. Stairs and landing. Given my previous history of 'Hoo Ha Occurring on Stairs ' - reference the Trapped Under the Sofa Incident and the Foot Wedged Between Bookcase and Stair Rise Debacle - I thought it wise to pay for professionals to decorate the stairs and landing rather than get myself in a mix with ladder and plank combinations and achieve the Magic Three of staircase accidents. The decorators are a father and son combo who go by the  names of Craig and David. This automatically causes me entertainment. 'Came in on a Monday, prepped, filled and undercoated, back on Thursday, first top coating, by Friday finishing touches...' Okay, not as frisky or well-scanned as the original song, but you get where I'm coming from. Anyway, before they started the job Craig asked what colour I wanted for the walls. 'Same colour as the downstairs walls, please,' said I. 'Dulux Frosted Dawn.' And then white for all the woodw
2 comments
Read more

Day 1 - Decisions Are Made Beyond the Author's Control.

‘Well,’ I say, looking at the expectant faces gathered around the huge table in the Great Dining Hall of Much Malarkey Manor, ‘I didn’t think it was going to happen this year, but it is!’ There is a sharp intake of breath as everyone wonders of what I speak. I’ve been muttering about all sorts recently, and I’m not talking liquorice here either.   ‘The Much Malarkey Manor Annual and Traditional Christmas Story!’ I say, and wait for the expulsed air of relief to settle before I continue. ‘I thought we had done it all. I thought we had covered every Christmas story there was. I’ve been wracking my brains for a full two months now, trying to come up with something we haven’t done before and then it hit me! We haven’t done a version of one of the Great Christmas Films of Yore!’ ‘Your what?’ says Mrs Slocombe, who is more interested in the selection of pastries I have brought to this breakfast meeting, because that is what one does, isn’t it? Eat pastries at breakfast mee
8 comments
Read more

Launched!

  I was going to wait until tomorrow to launch the ‘Hallo Tarot!’ website, what with tomorrow being 1st July and, therefore, a nice tidy date for a beginning. But this afternoon, I became involved in a flurry of final tidy loose ends activity, and thus ended up cracking the metaphorical bottle of champagne against the ship of which I am Captain and whoosh! Off she went into the World Wide Web!  You can find it here : www.hallotarot.co.uk The blog is moving there, too, so unless things go horribly wrong, this will be the last entry here.  I hope to see you on the other side then! Let me know what you think. 
Post a Comment
Read more