We have hot water.
We have hot water everywhere.
By everywhere obviously I do not mean in a puddle at the bottom of the stairs. There was a puddle there but it has mostly dried out now and it was cold anyway.
I mean in all of the taps and in the radiators.
It is not very hot yet because so far we have only burned a tiny handful of sticks, but the hotness that has resulted from even such a tiny expenditure of stickiness has been entirely astonishing.
I take back almost everything I have said about Mark and the central heating system. In the cupboard with the tank there is a network of pipes that looks rather like when Rosie got hold of my knitting wool. They seem to be weaving off all over the place, but somehow they work. We have got hot water coming out of every possible outlet, at a decent pressure as well. Not only that but there is no longer the ghastly problem of the leg on the pipes, by which I mean the three gallons of cold water you have got to tip down the sink before you get to the hot bit. It all comes out of the tap as hot as a hot thing. Well, a warm thing, anyway
We have not yet got the divorce solar panel and the windmill into the system. That is next week’s adventure. Those will mean that when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, the water will become properly, decently hot. So far it is just warm, which is all right because any reduction in electricity use is good. The water in the washing machine is warm when it goes in, and in the shower and the dishwasher. Also the radiators are hotter than they have ever been, even after the tiny stick-handful, and when I brought our clothes in from the washing line because of the rain, they not only dried in half an hour, but were warm and lovely to put on as well.
We have put them on because we are about to head north. It is the time for collecting Oliver again, and we have been invited for dinner at school tomorrow night. This is the sort of affair where you are expected to look middle class and not blow your nose on your napkin, or worse, call it a serviette, I am in no danger of the latter, but will have to keep my eye on Mark about the former.
Hence I have spent today finishing the cleaning, of which there was still a great deal, and running about organising smart clothes and clean shoes and ironed handkerchiefs. It is an awful lot of effort to be in the middle classes, I am so glad we don’t do it often, what a lot of faffing about it is.
Mark is in the shower now as I write, and when he has finished we will be going. I don’t expect we will get far, because we have both suddenly been overwhelmed by the exhaustion of relief, we have a warm, clean, tidy house and everything is all right again.
The last few days have been pretty hair-raising, I can tell you. Radical plumbing is all very well but it would have been pretty grim if it hadn’t worked. We would have been left with a massive mess and ice on the inside of the windows.
He did not know it would work. It is his own design, and it really is ridiculously odd. He has made heat exchangers and breather valves, has insulated and pumped and bashed things, but it works, and we have hot water at every tap, instantly and at no cost whatsoever.
We are going to go to Scotland now. When we wake up in the morning we will be somewhere else, and our warm little house will be waiting for us when we come back again.
Hurrah.
PS.Lucy is going to get a cat. She asked me if I could think of any nice cat names. I thought of Herpes, Merkin and Frottage, so she said she would ask somebody else. If anybody has any ideas do let me know and I will pass them on. I think it will fit in nicely, it was advertised on the internet by an idiot, described as a TortureShell.
Number One Daughter has two cats. They are both called Cat. I like that.
