Thermostat

Today

Why is it that the minute you decide that it's time to turn off the heating for the summer the temperature plummets by about ten degrees? After a couple of weeks during which Paul complained about how hot the bedroom was getting when the heating turned itself on in the mornings, I decided it was time and turned the switch.

So today, with a high of about eight degrees manifesting itself, I'm freezing. The boiler will have to be turned on again tonight. At least with a modern gas combi-boiler it's relatively easy; I don't have to coax a coal boiler into creaking action.

In My Day

Mamma and Daddy had objections to central heating, the reasons for which I never entirely fathomed. As a child my experience of it was confined to school where we had ancient radiators that reluctantly became lukewarm after days of concentrated effort from a hidden boiler. Despite the layers of clothing into which I was bundled, I was often cold and we would all find excuses to cram around the radiators which did anything, it seemed, other than actually radiate heat. The heat, such as it was, probably gathered in the hign ceilings. They were huge cast-iron affairs covered with layers of peeling and lumpy paint in places and rusty in others. Given their efficiency, they were rather all talk and no do.

The heating was always turned on on October 1st, regardless of whether we were experiencing an Indian Summer or not, and off on May 1st, even if it was snowing. The boilers were probably coal or coke-fired and required a lengthy period of stoking up and cooling down, and switching on and off was not to be taken lightly. They must have cost a fortune to run for so little effect. I expect it was quite warm in the boiler room, but I could never find any excuses to venture so far.

Unpredictable heating continued to be a feature of my life for many years; in the more affluent establishments, convector heaters might be wheeled in to help; in others where strict economy was the rule, you simply dressed to cope. Even at Flare we were for many years the helpless victims of an elderly system which was reliable only in that it would always break down when there was snow on the ground and often failed to bring a single office up to the required legal minimum of sixteen degrees. How excited we were when we at last were able to fork out the cash to replace it with a modern system!

In fact, I am beginning see to the point of Mamma and Daddy's objections; with coal fires you could at least predict the hot and cold spots, even if you had to cope with dirt, smoke blowing back, and chimney fires.