Thursday 12 January 2023
There’s nothing quite like moving house, the cost of energy being extortionate, a confusing new set of meters and heating system, an energy company that requires a day off to call and be passed from agent to agent and not having been put on a default, ie even more extortionate, electricity tariff to dampen a day with the first (to be confirmed) bill of around £2,200. For under two months. It’s a long, complicated, ongoing issue, part our incompetence and part errors and flaws on the part of the energy provider. It is a long story but we seem to have grounds to contest it and get it reduced, but as it currently stands that’s the amount we’ve apparently spent on electricity. I felt sick when I heard that, and sick again now I’m thinking about it. I honestly can’t process the idea of £2,200 for about eight weeks of electricity. For three of those weeks, we weren’t here and for the first four weeks we didn’t even have an electric boiler. But, no, I am not wishing we had the back boiler powered by the multi-fuel burner back in action.
Yesterday, before the electricity bill shock, I set off for IKEA Edinburgh. We are now in flat pack hell. But we do have a fab light in the living room, which basically does what a ceiling light would do, ie it’s a huge arc so the bulb hangs over the middle of our small seating area. We have both already hit our heads on it, but a bit of readjusting and it will be glorious. So much better, and energy-efficient, than twelve inset lights that come on together.
I also bought four sets of rather weedy curtain poles and curtains. The curtains were either £40 or £60 (ie depending on the curtain not my inability to remember the price) and the rail sets were £19. I had vowed not to buy any make-do things, but curtains are bewilderingly expensive, there’s more choice than I want to contend with at the moment and the absence of curtains is really getting to both of us, for the aesthetics, for the draughts and that curtains make places feel cosier when they’re closed. We also have our first visitor due on Friday or Saturday and it’d be great to have curtains up in her bedroom, especially as I am not at all convinced the much-delayed Velux blinds will actually arrive tomorrow as their early December email had suggested.
Bad timing for our first visitor, but we are now on a tight heating regime to try to balance the current shocker of a bill. The heating was on for an hour and a half in the ‘cheaper’ tariff we should have been on instead of the default high. We have set it to go off again in the evening ‘cheaper’ time and any boost between 13:00 and 16:00, the third ‘cheaper’ time, where necessary. The heating hasn’t been off long but I am already contemplating the layers for today’s wardrobe. We are at least fortunate that the previous owner spent a lot of time and money insulating this house so I know it’s a lot less cold than it could be.
Chris is going out today to do some food shopping and because he wants to go out. We both realise that every few days we feel a need to go out. I’m not sure if it’s that we want to go to towns to encounter other people and see something other than (beautiful) countryside or whether it’s because we go out significantly less around the house here than around the flat in London. It’s weird though; I feel a need to go out, I go out, I enjoy the drive and constantly marvel at the scenery, I get to town, I love being in town and pottering around shops and walking on pavements and then I start thinking how much I want to get back home, to this lovely house in the middle of nowhere. Although, obviously, there are tracks and pathways through the trees and – what should I call it? Grass? Bog? Moss? – and they are great to walk across, sometimes I just want to walk on an easy surface. Around here, other than the uppy-downy loggers’ tracks, which are good to walk on, the easiest walks are left or right out the house along a road. It is not a busy road and I have walked along it without a single vehicle passing by, but it is still a road and you do have to move off the road when a vehicle drives past. Pavements are much easier. In Lewisham, there are miles and miles of pavements and park paths I can walk along and it is significantly easier to go for a walk with just regular shoes or trainers. It is also pleasant to look around shops, go for coffee, meet friends for walks … I’m caught between two worlds I really love. I just looked out the window as I was writing that. It’s minutes before sunrise and all I can see are the tops of conifer trees with hills beyond. It’s calming and beautiful. I basically want all the cakes on the display counter and to be able to eat them all at once.
Today, I’m awaiting delivery of the charpai/charpoy (Indian bed), a metal cage-like locker for the hallway and the rug that DPD failed to deliver Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday due to apparently being unable to locate the address. I am Zooming with a friend at ten, I have a lot of desk-based stuff to do and I want to tidy/sort one area, which could be the assembling of a flat pack. I suppose I should try to get a set of curtains up. That requires a spirit level (apparently), which means I am not a good person for the job (ditto Chris).