April visit 8

Little luxuries:

It was really good to have the gas stove – I used it in evenings in the bedroom until I went to bed; a nice warm room, 2 hot-water bottles & 2 (or 3!) duvets & I was perfectly comfortable. OK, ok, I’ll admit to turning into a nesh Southerner! But trust me: duvets are goooood!

We used to go camping a lot when I was a child, and again with my first boyfriend – Stan & I had no money to spare for hotels, so camping meant being able to go away for holidays, so no complaints. But I’ve got out of the habit… Getting old? Probably, but I couldn’t get over how much I missed lights switches! The current regime: find an extension cable and a lamp (or a couple of lamps, and find an adaptor), plug in the extension cable, switch on the electricity at the junction box, and switch on the lamp. Now that we’ve got three lamps and two extension cables, we manage to have light in two rooms. The loo, bathroom and back corridor do have ceiling lights, so there we only need to plug in the extension cable that supplies that part of the house. We have one 4-gang socket that works (that is the entire power supply to the house at the moment): into this Dominique had plugged the immersion heater, the lights to the back of the house, and we have added 2 extensions cables – one to the bedroom, and one to the kitchen. In the kitchen we have bought another extension cable so we can have lights over the table where we eat, as well as fridge & kettle/hob/lamp on the table where we prepare food. I’m sure that people will be having nightmares over the number of plugs leading off the one power source in the house!! Hi John! In mitigation: we unplug most of the stuff when we’re not using it, we switch off the electrics totally when we leave the house, and finally, if there’s too many things plugged in we know that the trip switch works!! Too many things usually means a light, the hob and another cooking source (a sort of flat griddle)!

As I say, I dream of light switches!

Talking of luxuries, I’ve turned into a girl! I’ve started eating chocolate… Weird or what? I think I’ve eaten more chocolate in the last two or three months than I did in the previous decade! It still only averages out at one or two bars a week, but that’s still an enormous increase. Hope it goes away soon. I think it’s probably comfort eating?