It's a gas...

Let's start with a confession. I forgot to order the LPG gas and now we have (to all intents and purposes) run out after this awful winter. Gas power is now strictly limited to such an extent that we are hardly using it at all and the gas at the bottom of the tank is (it appears - although it is invisible) very, very smelly. Fortunately, the shower is electric, we have back up electric oil-filled heaters, an electric oven and just about every electrical cooking implement know to man - microwave, air fryer, sandwich maker, two slow cookers (big and small), toasting machines, kettles, electric teaspoons, so pretty much everything you need to 'survive' and if the worse comes to the worse I can always get the camping stove out of the shed to warm soup with. Failing that I have wood and a chimemiere.

Of course, this means that we have no central heating and our fire, which looks like a real fire but is actually gas, is not in use either and keeping warm has very quickly become an obsession. Well, it is cold and wet and I hate shivering so I'm wearing many, many, many, many, many layers around the cottage and of course the dozens of candles in the living room in the evenings are a great source of warmth, so it isn't so hard (I can't imagine what living on the streets must be like). In fact, it makes me feel quite resourceful living on the edge (haha) despite not being that resourceful at all (otherwise I wouldn't have forgotten to order the gas would I?).

It got me thinking though and took me back to the days (WARNING: nostalgia alert) of the single coal fire we used to sit around when I was a kid. The warmth didn't reach far (not even to the back of the room), particularly if, like me, you were last on the warming pecking order, but it was better than nothing. The myth of ice on the inside of bedroom windows wasn't much of a myth in my case (just a very cold reality) but I did like the patterns the rime of ice made as long as I didn't touch it and get stuck to the glass and how my breath made clouds in the air as I lay in my bed.

My gran had a small coal fire in the kitchen and we'd sit by it feeding it coal from the coal cupboard in the corner. She'd sit in her armchair covered in a knitted patchwork blanket and me in an old wooden chair on the other side. She'd tell me stories as she knitted and we'd listen to the radio as we sat by the fire and sometimes a mouse would scamper through the ashes in the hearth. It was all very Dickensian, cosy though. I liked the sense of belonging I felt as I sat there, stooped and huddled, gazing into the flames and hearing my Gran's stories of times long, long ago about death and starvation and wars and angels marching in the sky. 

Sometimes it was so cold in our house that I didn't want to leave the comfort of the hearth to go to my bedroom and play games on my Xbox (not that Xboxes existed back then, it was just a cardboard box with an X drawn on it) and taking a bath was a very willy chilly experience. The bathroom pipes used to freeze all the time and so did my little pipe. The fire was almost as important as the telly in our living room, so a place by the fire where you could see the telly and feel the crackling flames was a small (but actually huge) heaven. What a change in the way we now live central heating has made. We wander around the house without coats, scarves and hats on, sometimes even in just our nightclothes. It's almost like living in the Caribbean but without the sunshine, monkeys, reggae and rum (so, maybe not anything like it at all then).

I can't help thinking that after this terrible gas disaster (not really so disastrous) that central heating seems to have, to some extent, isolated us from each other. There's no need to sit around the fire and tell stories, no need to all be in one room to keep warm, no need to run to the bathroom and back in the shortest time possible (over two minutes and your nose bits - amongst others - would turn blue), and no need to wear a balaclava, sleeveless pullover, and socks to bed. I'm not saying that I prefered the days of no central heating, but it certainly had a certain spartan charm.

Anway, The LPG gas was ordered last week and we await delivery (it may take up to two weeks as we need a tanker delivery but it is probably coming Friday) and in the meantime, we have gone back to the 1960s almost. No coal fire but the electric oven makes the kitchen warmish (if you leave the door open all day), it's almost cosy and if I stand by the sink, boiling water in the kettle to do the washing-up, I almost feel warmish.

They call it hearth and home don't they? Somehow central heating boiler and house doesn't quite have the same ring (particularly if it's a gas ring with no gas).