Friday 20 October 2023
Scotland in particular is in the midst of Storm Babet. We were initially expecting to be in the yellow warning zone but very lucky for us it moved over enough that we now, at least so far, appear to have only peripheral storm effects, currently wind but no rain. It’s 08:30 and I’ve just been out to the bins and it appears to be warmer outdoors than indoors and the river isn’t much higher than is currently normal. Having just said all that, an orange warning triangle has just come up on my screen to say that from midday we are in an area with heavy rain forecast. I had a walk yesterday, thinking I might not have an opportunity today with the storm; it’s still fairly mild and autumnal. Quiet before the storm, perhaps.
I keep remembering that I got up shortly after 04:00 to put a wash on (in the cheaper three-hour zone for electricity) and I have yet to hang it up. It’s that time of year where everything takes between three and five days to dry indoors. I realised I have about five days’ worth of socks left, hence putting the wash on while I was awake this morning. We have not really sorted out the heating in this house but using oil-filled radiators (we bought one to move around downstairs and one for upstairs) at night time and small fan heaters in day time seems to be working. I’ve been putting the main heating on during the one three-hour-economy time that isn’t overnight just to ease the damp in the living room (it’s more than three times less than the expensive fourteen hours and yet still costs more than we ever used to have to pay per kw/h). It’s a long and boring story but most of our radiators don’t work (kitchen, living room, utility room, a towel rail upstairs and the landing upstairs are the only areas that benefit from central heating being on) and to get them to work would require a long and messy process because there is probably sludge in most of the radiators and they were not installed with isolator valves so the entire system would have to be drained in one go rather than radiator by radiator.
Tonight, I will largely be making and eating curry. I’m going through another experimental phase, which is timed badly as I’m home alone for the next fortnight so may be eating leftovers for a few days. This was in part triggered by a very, very slim chance of a job in Delhi in December, which I see as an opportunity to stock up on fresh spices and some of the less conventional ingredients my Indian cookery books suggest (ie published in India for the Indian market).
Our new TV arrived yesterday. In today’s television market, it’s a “mere” 32”, which already seems to take up too much room. However, we have arranged the living room not to factor in a television and I have no idea where to set it up. Where it is currently sitting, not set up to work yet, it’s so far away from the living room chairs that it would need to be a much bigger TV. Where it could go, in a slightly less than ideal second choice location, there is no table/nothing the TV could stand on. Not at all convinced a TV is the way forward for us, certainly not in terms of an obvious place to keep it and watch it.