Warm Home, Warm Bones

When I was younger I always used to think of the things I’d do as a grown up.

I would buy one of those fancy, taffeta type ball dresses from the Grattan catalogue and wear it to dinner parties.
I would stay up WAY past 7.30pm, even if I had to get up for work or something.
I would eat party food for all my meals and sweets every day if I wanted to and I would DEFINITELY have a fairground and swimming pool in my back garden. That Michael Jackson really knew how to adult properly (don’t judge me, it was the 80s – I was a child).

The list of things I would do once I was a grown up was endless!

I sit here now, as an adult (?) and recall my list, then I realise with pride, I have actually fulfilled one item on that list.

I don’t have a fancy dress or eat party rings for breakfast (at least not every day). I definitely don’t have a pool or fairground in my back garden, but I do have a warm house!

When I was 20 I moved into a council house.  It had no heating, and draughty old windows. The council were ‘in the process’ of renovating all the properties they owned and so determined there was no rush to remedy this situation. That winter was frickin’ grim. I invited my parents round to dinner and the food went cold instantly, I had to sleep in this ugly heavy tracksuit with the hood up, and I’d wake up to the insides of the window covered in ice.

It was like a scene out of Frozen only less magical.
As I lay there I told myself, when I was a proper grown up my house would never be cold again.

As a result, I tend to have the heating on ‘all day’ from mid September, just to make sure I don’t get cold.
Yes, I know I could put a jumper on but it’s just not quite the same.

I like to feel warm to my bones.

Rory does have issues with the heating going on before the clocks go back – he says it affects his asthma, but I think it is the pain in his wallet he is more worried about.

Though, that isn’t to say we haven’t had issues with the heating at our house – it has taken a while to get over the snowy January that the pilot wouldn’t light (in retrospect I’m grateful it wasn’t Japanese). As Seth was only a few months old we were put on the priority list from our central heating “care” provider (a snip at £24 per month), and a gas engineer visited to fix it within four days of it breaking. It is only then that you realise it is actually virtually impossible to keep a modern house heated via expensive electric heaters, one gas fire (that you watch the children and cats gravitating towards like moths to a….) and as many hot water bottles as you can dig out.

We realise we are on so much borrowed time re our boiler replacement that we daren’t look at the interest charge. As a result, somewhere on our to-do list is to shop around for quotes for a new central heating system/boiler.

Fingers crossed this one will last until summer!