Gas

[poliphilo]

Our gas supplier is raising the price of its product by some ridiculous percentage.  Time to get out the woolies.

I refuse to feed their shareholders' hunger.

Because central heating is very nice and all, but I lived the first ten years of my life without it.  Later, as a young married, I spent three years in a draughty, decaying, unheated, Victorian vicarage in Cambridge- and If you can survive a fenland winter without buffering you can survive anything.

Ailz says we can go sit in the public library if it gets really cold. 

Comments

[idahoswede.livejournal.com]

If it gets too chilly this winter, I will move my mattress into my sitting room and shut off the bedrooms. I will most definitely have the spare bedroom unheated. It will have to be pretty cold not to sleep in my bedroom with an extra quilt, but I can see doing what I used to do as a child - having my clothes ready, jumping up and scurrying into the warm room to dress.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

A recession calls for resourcefulness. I like to think of it as a game. The alternative is to fret and be miserable- and where's the good in that?

[aellia.livejournal.com]

I've been trying to switch and cap the price but as I am not a mathemetician nor do I have a business degree I'll join you with exrta woolies.
Remembering scraping out patterns on the ice that was on the inside of all the windows!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Good old Jack Frost. It'll be nice to make his acquaintance again.

[nostoi.livejournal.com]

We're with Equigas who are non profit making and also don't penalise low users or those who have meters by charging them more.

Our gas bill came down quite a bit after we moved to them, although they put prices up a few months ago after a couple of years of not doing so, but at least there are no rich shareholders profiting from my need to be warm in the winter!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Hmm, thank you for that.

I'd not heard of them before. Seems like this could be worth looking into.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Ailz's comment was delightful.

And she's right!

(BTW, I would have LOVED TO HAVE LIVED in a "draughty, decaying, unheated Victorian vicarage in Cambridge." My God how wonderful!)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The Vicarage no longer exists. It was demolished so the college next door (my old theological college) could expand. It had an orchard full of wonderful old apple trees.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

And apple trees, too?

I could have written a romance novel there...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Oh, and tramps used to sleep in the lean-to bicycle shed....

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

Even in southern Spain we need winter heating although we have switched to a heat by the room system (electric). It's quite economical and involves the use of inverter heat pumps in each room that have individual controls. of course we did have to make the initial investment to install all that.

We tend to do a lot of layerd bundling up in the winter inside, anyway. It's often warmer in the sun outside than in in Seville in January.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

This is not an economical building to heat- what with the high ceilings and all.

But our British winters do seem to be getting warmer.

We did a trial run earlier this year- when the central heating went down (because, embarrassingly, we'd managed to flip the switch without noticing) and we managed OK.

[sunfell.livejournal.com]

I keep my heat at 64° in the winter, and dress warmly, use 'spot' heating, and mattress pad heaters. The cats have fur coats, and the Meezer can cuddle with me at night, which he does with glee. If he needs more insulation, I'll have my friend knit him a coat.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We're beginning to work on our strategies.

Or- rather- Ailz is. She's the practical one. My thinking doesn't extend much beyond piling on the sweaters and body-warmers....

[wyrmwwd.livejournal.com]

I think there is going to be a lot of that going on here this coming winter. We have high unemployment and lots and lots of snow. They are going to find frozen people in their homes this coming spring... mark my words.

I am leaving.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We have toyed with the idea of moving South- but the South of England isn't really any warmer than the North. Those two hundred miles make very little difference. And, besides, our corner of the North West benefits from the embrace of the Gulf Stream.

[richenda.livejournal.com]

There are still many people in the UK who haven't got any kind of central heating or a mains gas supply.
A friend of mine in a no-mains-gas area got an over-60s grant to instal Twin Economy heating (cheap electricity twice a day and storage heaters) and got into the routine of late lunch/early dinner and cooking in cheap time for a tiny freezer.
Then she moved to so-called sheltered accommodation which has gas central heating - so she doesn't use the central heating, because she can't possibly afford it, even with the £200 annual fuel allowance.
What's really mad is that the gas radiators aren't adjustable - she can't even turn one or another off, let alone down - so the only way of turning down the heating results in tepid washing up water. She leaves things in soak until she can use a kettle in cheap time.ses electric heaters (not radiant, of course!)on a timer, uses the electric shower in cheap time, and goes to bed early, because she can get up early, when the heater is on in cheap time.
Fortunately she joined a scheme whereby her electricity provider has undertaken not to raise the charges for another year. Also fortunately, she's fit enough to spend a lot of time on heated buses and in libraries.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I wonder if a time is coming when we'll all- except the very rich- regard central heating as an expensive luxury.

My mother's gloomy friend lent me a very gloomy book about how Western civilization is going to collapse once the oil runs out. I wasn't entirely convinced by the argument, but I do think there are hard times coming and we need to prepare for them.

[richenda.livejournal.com]

Addition to my previous commemnt.
The gas system isn't on mains gas, so she can't even switch to a cheaper supplier - it's supplied to a dozen houses from a communal tank, property of the supplier.
To be fair, this system was presumably installed ata time when this was cheaper than electricity - there's also the problem that the area is subject to longish power cuts, owing to overhead cables and a windy salty environment.
My guess is that the lack of radiator adjustment was designed to circumvent their being turned off or up by accident or in confusion.