Ethics Trading

It’s taught us a lot of lessons though.

Last weekend we discovered the boiler had broken and we were without hot water or any form of house heating. It was suddenly very cold and felt just a bit damp. So we called an engineer out and he was with us the same day.Now, let me point out at this point that we live in a council house and these are council staff we’re dealing with. He was brilliant, efficient, polite and explained things as he went along.

The boiler is a good one, a condensing boiler that uses noticeably less fuel than the one we had before they decided to replace it – but the old one never broke down. Swings and roundabouts huh? But it’s broken, very broken and needs a new control board to get it fixed. The part is on order. It’s been a week of no radiators and feeling cold. But we’ve coped. We were loaned 2 emergency heaters – small electric blower things that do warm a room nicely, but we actually don’t have them on a lot, just to warm things up a bit in the evenings and I have one blowing at the washing as otherwise it’s go stale and stinky.

This happened last year too – same problem and same cause – and it got me thinking then and I’ve been thinking again now. When I was growing up we had houses without modern central heating and we were ok. We’ve coped fine here for a week with extra layers of clothing, going to bed a bit earlier, plenty of hot drinks through the day and hot water bottles at night. Oh and an extra layer of bedding at night. but it’s been fine and we’ve thought a lot more about how we use fuel to heat our home and about how we can preserve what heat we have. We’ve appreciated things a little more.

It should be fixed next week and I think I’m going to turn the thermostat down and carry on wearing a vest. I will, however, thoroughly enjoy the luxury of a steaming hot, deep bath – which is something our back up immersion heater just can’t cope with.

Today it’s thawing outside and noticeably warmer, the grass is green and I can see the first tiny daffodil shoots poking through the earth in a pot outside. I have crocuses growing in a cupboard in the kitchen and I’m going to clean and oil my Paper Potter this afternoon because I’m starting to feel all spring like. I may even dig out left over seeds and list them so I know what I’ve got and what I might want for growing this year.

But first it’s time for a nice fresh cuppa…..

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