| Fascinating Musings |
| Season 1 – Monday – 05/12/22 |
| A very bleak day on the River Stour |
| You can’t help but ask yourself why on earth, in this day and age, we are in this shituation regarding energy. How did our supposedly wise governments NOT see this threat? Why had they become so complacent regarding how they sourced, produced, and bought their powers and more importantly from who? This is the winter of discontent and worries for many people and families in the UK, myself included; l am not an unmoving rock to these disturbances and financial stresses. I am not some political pundit; l am just another average Joe observing what is going on and how it affects me. I will not offer solutions to problems of scale that all my years in management never needed to tackle. However, commonsense and understanding that this crisis started decades ago must not be ignored. This is not a today issue. This is a long-standing problem that both complacency and greed have manufactured, combined with the ol’ head-in-the-sand routine that so many governmental and nay-sayers alike are guilty of and have been over the years. This isn’t a political post, either. It is just an observation concerning the ironies of certain things and my twisted humour of sorts. I am sitting here typing this, wearing four layers of clothing. Four! Sitting in my house. The heating isn’t on. We use that luxury marginally these days—an hour or two during the day to heat the home. We have blankets on top of the quilts in the house. I have two fleeces. We occasionally have hot water bottles as we did as kids to warm the bed linens up. What also makes me laugh in a surreal manner is that l remember clearly as a teenager in the mid-seventies in England how many of the energy tips we grew up with as kids have become the saving graces of wisdom we didn’t perhaps value back then today. Things make sense – or more sense. Keep all the doors closed to keep the heat in, and turn off the lights in rooms not being used. Don’t get me wrong, l have always practised these and many more, we both have, our parents hammered them home but what l do find sooo funny is that here we are fifty years later, applying the same knowledge and really having to. The energy companies seemingly relish that they are making huge profits – sheesh, l am pleased for you, he thought snarkastically. NOT. We have stopped using the oven here because this rental is all-electric. Ironically, the heating [the marginally cheaper option] is gas, which we are not using much of anyway. So we are now using a camping stove or the microwave, which is more affordable, although we have recently bought an air fryer which is significantly cheaper to run than the ovens. So we have a redundant oven. Also, as l walked around the house, l noted the other redundancies that have plummeted in price [meaning selling them is nigh on impossible for a decent return] because of their energy usage – the treadmill. Admittedly that has been dormant for some time and most of this year. But with all the grey weather we have been experiencing alongside the rains and the inability to get out and walk regularly or even get down out of the house to the allotment, we decided not to use it. The other comical thing we no longer use, and it’s not funny considering we bought it to increase efficiency on energy, was the condenser dryer we purchased early this year. For those times when you can’t hang your washing outside, and it is not viable having a hose hanging out of an open window. Now, however, it’s become an expensive piece of shit that sits there doing nothing… I find some of these things funny when they are clearly not and you’ll not hear me laugh! |
Earthly Comforts 
So many will suffer this winter 😞
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Hey Paula, sadly yes.
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I can imagine how difficult it will be as it grows colder. What a stupid government you have, or us too.
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Hey Sadje, indeed the world is filled currently and with stupidity from our governments.
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Very sad but true
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Lots of funny, not funny at the Casa currently🤪
We never use heat either. We do get near freezing nights in winter. Lots of layers and blankets…
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Yes life has become a right shit show.
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Yep! That doesn’t even include things like our fridge dying, or trouble Ben has had at school.
The funny, not funny part is… I’ve been thru worse🤪🤦🏼♀️
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Haha not funny …
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We’ve sleepwalked into these problems and you can bet it can be traced back to electing Maggie Thatcher. 😜
It’s not been too bad this year though: only just needed to turn the CH on this month; even throughout October/November it wasn’t needed at all. In contrast, 2021, there were three days in August when we turned the heating on for a bit, it turned that chilly.
We have built the wrong sort of housing in the UK. Too hot in Summer, too cold in Winter. Inefficient for the new heat pump systems they now want us to retro-install. A disaster.
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Hey Ian, you have been very lucky. In truth, l can survive without the heating on, but Suze suffers a bit and now mostly that is because of her cancer. The lasting side effect for her was the peripheral neuropathy which has meant she feels the cold more now than ever before.
For me l just throw another jumper on or in recent times four layers. Sandwich has become bitterly cold in the last two weeks.
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