Central heating: great if you know how to use it

It’s pleasant to be home early, even if it’s only to continue working. Just being in your own space and not in an office is good for the mood. Though that’s not helped by grey weather and light fading at an impossibly early hour – barely after 4:00, for Pete’s sake. Sheesh. Call that a civilised arrangement?

The worst though is the cold. You can take it out of doors, but indoors? No. Indoors should be toast-like.

So when I got in this afternoon, I made straight for the thermostat.

Now, I didn’t turn it right up to 21 degrees (Celsius, that is; nearly 70 in that silly system some of you insist on still using). I did that the other day and was sweltering within minutes. Having to open windows and all that.

Instead, I pushed it to 19. That, I felt, should do the job.

It didn’t, though. Half an hour later, I was still freezing. Well, not really freezing, I know. Not like the homeless or anything. Not like being outside on a Russian street. Not like the inside of a Russian leader, for that matter. But for me, subjectively, still unpleasantly cold.

So up went the thermostat to 21, after all. 

Still no good though. A while later I felt as unnecessarily chilly as ever.

Great when it works. Not so good when you can't work it

By then, it was pretty well dark. 

“Ah,” I thought to myself, “psychology has a big role to play in these things. I know. I’ll turn on some cheery lights and draw the curtains. Make it look cosy and it’ll feel cosy.”

For a while I kidded myself that this was working, but as my toes started issuing frostbite alerts, I decided that I could delude myself no longer. However hard I tried to convince myself that I was now warm, all the evidence was against me. I was just as cold as when I came in.

“Just as cold?” A nasty suspicion began to form in my mind. I stalked over to the central heating boiler and opened the inspection flap.

It was as I feared. The house wasn’t cold because the thermostat had cut out the heating. It was cold because my wife, in a prudent and wise economy measure, had turned the boiler over to hot water only. The heating was off.

What’s that you say? I should have checked a radiator? I’d have known at once?

Easy to be wise after the event, my friend. Why weren’t you there offering me that advice this afternoon when I needed it? And sparing me a couple of hours of perishing cold indoors?