The Central Heating's Bust

[poliphilo]

I was born in another age. We were reasonably well to do but we didn't have central heating until I was about twelve. Before then we made do with electric heaters and open fires. You moved from hot spot to hot spot through great gaps of cold. And even when you were within the aura of a heat source the side of you facing it would be warm and the other side freezing.

I'd get into bed on a winter's evening and it'd be like slipping between sheets of ice. I had a hot water bottle in a red, knitted jacket. I hardly dared move because the only patch of the bed that was the least bit warm was the bit in direct contact with my body. 

And just as winter could be bone-numbingly cold, so summer was sometimes insupportably hot.  Central heating and air conditioning have blanded out the year. The seasons have become a lot less noticeable. Our homes and offices and cars are climate controlled. Those of us who don't work outside- which is most of us- can dodge the extremes. In the past there was no escape.
 
You know what? I think we've lost something. 

Comments

[cataptromancer.livejournal.com]

Strangely, in New York I always thought of summer as cold (because invariably a/c was more intense than it should have been, especially in stores/school buildings) and winter as hot (because the radiators in our apartment made it like a sauna). Our artificial environments can do strange things to the year...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's just weird.

New York has a pretty extreme climate though, doesn't it? Hard winters, sweltering summers- much more extreme than we get anywhere in Britain- where the edge is taken off things by the Gulf Stream.