I know it's not really that cold. The day JJ and I flew into JFK airport back in '94 it was -15 degrees and a week later when we got of the train in Syracuse it was -37 degrees. Now that was cold... I swear, we watched a man die in the street that day.
When we moved here in the Summer, it was beautiful. It's still beautiful now but holy mother, it's hard to keep warm. To give you a quick overview, there is no central heating. We also have no hot water because the water tank takes at least four hours to get hand hot never mind bath hot. This we can live with because there's an electric shower and a dishwasher, so that's the basics taken care of. For the last few weeks though as the temperature has dropped, we've been using the log burner in the lounge simply because it's not nice coming home and watching your breath freeze in front of your eyes and fall into your mug of tea.
So today, when the temperature dropped even further, I thought it might be time to fire up the Rayburn in the kitchen. I've never used one before and was acutely unaware of exactly how long it would take to get warm. I started at 10 this morning. It's now 6 o'clock and it's just about warming up. Seriously, it's a real labour of love getting the old bugger going but I have managed to do lots of things in between pushing and pulling levers and poking the coals. I kind of appreciate now how neat it is to walk in your house and flick a switch for some heat but there's a part of me (the Robin Hood part of me) that also thinks this is great and that everybody should live like this. Hopefully we'll make it through to the spring without too many tears.
So, after loading her up with paper, coal, wood, firelighters and whatever else wasn't nailed down this morning, we went out for a walk to investigate some of the roads we'd not been up before, but first we went to check on the horses in the field across the road. All of the others in the field have a rug on, but this poor soul doesn't. I don't think this bothers him in the slightest especially since the hay wheel (seen in background) was installed in the field yesterday.
There's all sorts of stuff going on around here that I've never noticed before. Much to my own amusement, I found this run down old house (sign on the left). I must go back another day and take some pictures of it but today there were people milling about who might not have appreciated my Shirley Jackson humour. There are also sprouts growing in their thousands in the surrounding fields, sheep that look very happy despite the weather and we even found where the allotments are - about 100 yards from the house. A few hours later, we eventually came home armed with huge branches that found at the roadside for the wood burner and some stolen sprout leaves for the rabbits. I am absolutely convinced that we can live here almost for free. The key is in not getting caught stealing or dying of hypothermia before we master it.
Anyway - somebody looks happy enough...
The Rayburn has finally gotten a bit hotter while I have been writing this and I have almost finished the final draft of The Tuba Farm - exactly as I promised myself.
Onwards...
