Heat At Last!

Goodness, it has been cold this week. The ambient temperature may have been a lot higher than previous weeks, but the rayburn was broken and not running, so the house felt more and more like a refrigerator. The grate slider bar snapped and a grate bar had buckled so badly that it nearly formed a semi-circle instead of being straight and we'd had to let it go out anyway so the chimney sweep could do his stuff.

So, this week has been a week of wearing several layers of jumpers inside the house, huddling in the kitchen, where the little electric, oil-filled heater did it's best to keep Tom warm and thinking of ablutions with great shivering. Yesterday, Kim finally managed to replace the broken bits and fix in the infernal rayburn enough to light it and both Tom and I were ready to put out the bunting.

Only, it didn't work out quite as well as I had hoped - I woke up in the middle of last night and had to throw the covers off I was so hot. Today, I'm walking around in a T-shirt and the cat is throwing himself onto cold spots on the lino as he's overheated. It's not that I'm grumbling, but I realised that I had acclimatised amazingly well to having no heating.

I also know it was very cold as our freezer in the scullery stopped working; the fridge on top was working fine, so we knew the fuse hadn't gone, but the freezer just stopped being cold. We figured out why - the scullery, which we keep unheated, had got so cold that the coolant in the freezer had just about frozen, or had gone sludgy enough to stop working. Stupid huh? The scullery was colder than the inside of the freezer for several days and all our meat defrosted and had to be thrown away. Still, at least I know I can acclimatise!

Meanwhile, the cat puncture on my wrist has healed amazingly. V very kindly sent over a healing salve, and with the antibiotics and numerous applications of my calendula cream, you can barely see where Tom sank his fang into me. Lucky for Tom, I decided not to hold it against him - he has spent more time on my lap in the past week than in the last year - it seems I make an excellent paw warmer and human radiator - as I'm not fooling myself that it's love!

So, I'm about to retire into the sitting room, devoid of a fire in the hearth for the first time in weeks, as it's way too hot and I won't want to wilt, to start my weekend with a lazy evening in front of the life support machine (aka our television).