Thursday 17 January 2013

Fireside story



The temperature steadily rose last night and the frost has disappeared, which means the mercury is hovering somewhere around the 0 to +1 mark - warm enough for the snow which is supposed to arrive tomorrow.

I'll walk down the street again and see if the junkie is back in his place, telling everyone to 'have a nice day' as he curses them under his breath for not giving him any money. I really don't know what to do about his 'caravan', because I am not likely to furnish him with his next ten-pound bag, and I am not interested in buying his Methadone - I used to like the odd bit of class A, but I have always saved the opiates for when I really need them - terminal cancer, for instance. I may put him in touch with St Martins in the Fields and leave it to the professionals.

As I walk past him, I am on my way to the home of my best client, who just happens to be rather on the wealthy side. In weather like this, a full-sized tanker arrives at his house once a week to top up the heating oil. An outside pools steams away all winter at a constant temperature of 25 degrees. They want me to look at another marble figure. I am going from one extreme to another today.

Our compact but adorable city apartment has no heating to speak of, and as I type this my fingers are getting colder and colder, but I need no sympathy - we like it that way. We are constantly offered free central heating, and we are constantly rejecting it. I seriously considered fitting a log-burner here this winter, until someone brought me back to reality by asking how and where I would store the logs, how I would bring them upstairs and how I would dispose of the ashes every day. It's a shame, really - I love staring into a real fire.

Maybe I should have a constant video of a log fire burning away as a screen-saver? Don't laugh, people really do this (click above whilst you read this). When I was a kid, we had a two-bar electric heater with a flickering light shining through a red filter onto plastic logs, and even then I refused to be psychologically duped by it - I have always hated bad pastiche, even though I still really like the good sort - frosted glitter on Christmas cards, for instance.

H.I. absolutely hates looking and films set in frozen Arctic wastes, or at the peak of some -50 mountain range, but I absolutely love them. They make me feel so cosy and privileged - even though the ambient temperature rarely rises above about 10 in this flat, this time of year.

She loves reading in bed though, which is where all her reading is done, every night. I love the idea of it, but as soon as I am tucked up and half-way through the first paragraph, the next thing I know is that it is 4 in the morning, and I am lying face down in a pool of my own saliva which is spread over paragraph one in whatever book my head happens to be resting on.

I could be worse - I could be lying face-down in a pool of someone else's saliva I suppose. Those were the days.

10 comments:

  1. Minus 6 here today and getting lower. Log burner lit and me staring into the glowing door. Sorry Tom but I am a cold mortal and need it to keep me going.
    Speaking of glitter - I bought some M and S wrapping paper with glitter stars on it and I am still finding glitter everywhere. Our ancient kitchen table, where I wrapped the presents, is made of oak in about six panels and each panel is mnow edged with a stripe of glitter - it will still be around next Christmas even if I'm not.

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    1. S and M wrapper? The market has sped before me.

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  2. The news on the radio as I type ... fifteen fires burning out of control in NSW and several houses have been burned down in South Australian wild fires.

    By the by:
    Thanks, in advance, for checking in on your mate downstairs.

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    1. I'm having him round for dinner tonight - waste not, want not.

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  3. We've had really cold temperatures to start the new year, then it got unseasonably warm melting most of the snow, and snowed again yesterday.

    Why are you rejecting free central heating? To each his own, just curious.

    I have a woodstove in my office, which happens to be the coldest room in the house, so i'm very glad that i can fire things up as needed.

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  4. We don't have much heating on either, but we do keep a heater on in the bathroom so that naked bits of skin don't get too frozzled, and we do have an electric blanket on the bed as I really do dislike getting into cold and damp sheets. Otherwise, we have loads of layers of clothing on, plus thermals underneath all. Used to have a fully centrally heated house back in the UK and always suffered from chest infections during the winter. Here I don't. Anyways, I understand why you don't want central heating!

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    1. That's right. And the junkies don't start to smell under the bed until spring in this weather, by which time they are gone.

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  5. Do you not heat your small but adorable apartment, at all?

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    1. Yes. I suck a strong peppermint, then stick out my tongue for H.I. to warm her hands.

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