First Snowfall - Second fill-up of the Oil Tank.

                                          

Snow! Oh sh . . winter's here, we haven't got a freezer yet, the dining room's a glass box and the path down to the lane is as lethal as the Cresta run - only lumpier. 

 

I keep telling myself that I ought to be nervous, that I'm about to find out why certain friends who shall not be named but who know who they are, implied that we were/are/would soon find out/ that we're mad . . . (they meant too old) . . . to leave the safe, cosy city and begin teetering down bad paths, messing with house extensions, stone cottages and being 3 miles from a shop, when we should be thinking about bungalows, slippers and cardigans. (They didn't say that last bit . . . but you get the gist) They may well be right - but you know being too safe and comfortable may not be all it's cracked up to be as a way to face ageing and mortality. Many of our friends - again you know who you are - have chosen some unsafe routes through life - extreme sports, risky jobs, working in the public sector, radical relationships, beings artists, writers, feminists. What's a dodgy path and a bit of snow compared with that. We all die in the end. There's no escape from that. I just don't want to escape life.

Our friend Jo, sent us a 'Welcome to your new home' banner she'd made which spells out Reasons to be Cheerful.  

 See Jo's work at http://www.joannamartinartist.blogspot.com/






 

The main reason to be cheerful is that the snow is beautiful, thrilling, exciting. Up on the hill today felt like walking through that famous Bruegel painting, Hunters in the Snow -  crossing the fields between black trees and hedges, squeezing through narrow stone stiles, stopping at the top to watch snow falling in great sweeps over the valley below. Darkness and light.

Another reason for cheerfulness is our wood stove - easy to light, super efficient and just what the heart and the cockles need on a day like this. Gives Him outdoors lots of wood chopping opportunities too - I can chop kindling perfectly well if I can get my hands on the axe, but this kind of country and weather brings out both his inner scout  and his inner Frenchman so it's hard to get a look-in. 

But it is very cold and as it gets colder, we are going through a frightening amount of fuel. The cottage has a Rayburn for cooking and central heating and it a serious binge oil drinker.  Living in the presence of this stove you can imagine that you've gone all Downton Abbeyish - maybe with a pheasant (or possibly  a peasant?) hanging from a hook over the kitchen range.  I can hear all you lefty-liberals snorting with derision at my class-traitordom but don't you ever have dreams of a new batch of bread baking in the top oven while a haunch of venison roasts in the bottom, wood smoke in the chimney, the sheep's in the meadow and all right with the world. But yes, I know, such a life never existed and anyway the likes of me, Wythenshawe girl, would have been blackleading the grate while the lady of the house used my back as a footstool. 

Anyway, fantasies aside, the Rayburn is no olde-worlde
kitchen range but a high tec piece of kit which probably cost a fortune to the previous owner, just as it will cost us if we let it, as well as being not so much environmentally unfriendly as environmentally antagonistic. It definitely has to go and be replaced with a less romantic but efficient condensing boiler and electric stove.


Anybody want a second hand dream machine that burns money?