The heating is on!

I was away last week, another jaunt that will hit your screens in due course. Cheer you up. It was a lot wetter than here, but for the most part a lot warmer. And a lot of fun. I got home on Sunday morning, Mrs L was out, and the house was like a tomb. Silent and cold. Oh so very cold. I have various temperature sensors spread around the place in order to monitor plants and wine - critical. The lowest of these displayed 12 degrees. It was only 9 in the greenhouse! We had not yet turned on the heating, and so over the last month or so the house has gradually cooled down. We do not have a tumble dryer, and Mrs L had complained to me on the family whatsapp channel that her clothes were not drying. She had hung them up outside and the permanent fog of the last few days had ensured that they had come inside wetter than when they had gone out. Back inside and they were still damp two days later and risked needing being washed again. It was time.

Would the central heating work? It hasn't been used since about March, possibly before. I had meant to conduct a test when plumbers were still available for less that £1000 an hour but had never got round to it. Mañana mañana. Thankfully it fired up first time, and whilst I can't say the house is cozy at this point it is nothing that a jumper cannot cope with. And the airer next to the radiator in the hall is now functioning as intended; Mrs L has retreated into her lair.

I don't follow energy prices by the minute, but you would have to have been living under a rock not to know that they are going up. They always go up. They might go down briefly in the summer when nobody is using very much, but by the time you actually need it in any quantity then bam, up it goes. Thanks Vlad. Thanks Donald. You hear about how much scarcer it is as a commodity, how much more expensive it is to source from alernative sources, and then you see the energy companies' profits soar and wonder if you are not being sold a massive lie. Shouldn't profits remain stable or even decline with higher wholesale prices? I think so, yet corporate greed ensures they balloon and there is nothing you or I can do about it. Vote with our feet? Pointless. You can go and live as a hermit in a cave or you can live with a miserable wife. Far easier to pay up. Last year my summer monthly bill doubled in January and managed to nearly triple in February which tends to always be the coldest month. And by then you are fed up of winter and that sod it button seems so much easier to press. In 2027 prices are expected to be 17% higher than in 2026. Excellent, excellent.

I've been round the house bleeding the radiators and indeed turning some of them off in lesser used wings. The thermostat tops out at 19 degrees but I am sure I did all this last winter and was still hit with a £500 bill. Better start saving. Meanwhile interest rates just went up, no young people can get jobs or buy houses, and we are being told to hoard baked beans. 2027 is shaping up to be a bundle of fun. The nature of my work, and to a certain extent my age, shields me against quite a lot of this - the big expenses in my life are nearly behind me. But I nonetheless have an underlying sense of unease that I find hard to express, and those in charge seem to be cultivating this unease rather than reassuring people. This is not....reassuring.

It just seems to be one thing after another. Without wishing to go all biblical the words war and pestilence keep coming to mind. These manifest in the modern world as pandemics, financial crises, terrorism, general instability and massive uncertainty. War I suppose is war, at least I don't have to fight in one. I think the other two in the Book of Revelation are famine and death. Maybe those translate as the more or less continuous cost of living crisis and an abysmal state of mental health? Who knows, but it is difficult to remain especially positive. Unless you read this blog of course where it is said that people unfailingly come away with a kind of glowing aura and remain of a sunny disposition for the rest of the day if not week. What's that you say? More trip reports?