Thursday 16 February 2023
In short, I am cold. The house is probably getting colder the longer it is without heating. Today, we will contact the electrician and hope he can sort us out. I am well and truly over heating issues, understandably. The temperature in the kitchen has been down to seven degrees and I think upstairs is probably a bit colder. I had a chat to someone in Lockerbie Tesco yesterday, not in the context of our heating problems, and she said she was struggling to get enough hours at work to consequently pay all her bills and that with her heating down to eight degrees she could just about manage, but she put it up to ten one day to try to get her home warmer but her bill increased by £60. I know that we are in the kind of cold that some people have no choice but to be in because they can’t afford to heat their homes. I have only been home and back in these temperatures for three days and I am increasingly grumpy and feeling disinclined to do anything that requires my getting up and out of whatever rugs I’m wrapped in. It’s not just the cold and how uncomfortable it is, it’s also my productivity and general wellbeing and happiness.
I’ll try to put the coldness element aside for now. My friend Carla caught a mid-afternoon train home from Lockerbie yesterday. Prior to that, we had two memorable walks, one past Over Phawhope Bothy in a valley surrounded by both fields with drystone walls and spruce trees, the other my favourite short walk through a magical patch of mossy woodland, where we sat and had coffee and Selkirk Bannock (a kind of fruit cake, like panettone, kind of dry yet somehow okay, but heavier, being 50% dried fruit) and where my phone battery drained. I know I said I wouldn’t mention the cold, but it was good to be in the car for a while with the heating on. Sigh.
I would not have walked into the bothy, what looked like an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere. Carla marched straight in to have a look, so I followed her. No one was there, though some kind people had written in the guest book the day before, saying they had left some kindling for people to use (even though they hadn’t stayed or used anything). It is a very old, very rough-and-ready shelter with basic platforms to sleep on, a stove for heat (and maybe to heat a kettle), a few sofas, surprisingly, and another small building with a composting toilet and additional sleeping platforms. I loved that one of the recent comments in the guest book related to the excellent roof tiling on the toilet block (it is worth a look!), praise from the perspective of a professional tiler.
I enjoyed catching up with Carla, a good friend, but Chris and I also enjoyed showing her around the area and seeing how much she liked it too. She didn’t complain once about being cold (she, like us, obviously was), despite the visible huff of cloudy breath when any of us spoke or breathed out.
It is now a minute to eight in the morning, outside is grey and still (strong winds forecast for later and tomorrow) and I am Zooming at ten and planning on finally unpacking (stuff from Chris having driven up to London with another full car load while I was away and also from my trip to Delhi). Two more of the three outstanding Velux blinds arrived on Tuesday (for our bedroom), so putting them up and not having suitcases in the living room would be a big improvement. I also have a lot of desk-based stuff to do.