More wood, Igor

Having surveyed our fast-dwindling supply of firewood (almost a cubic metre in only a month of part-time stove firing, I arranged for our supplier to bring us 5 cbm more of the same. He rang to say he'd drop it round on Monday morning but would have to come twice because he didn't have the big truck at the moment, only the pick-up. The pick-up only takes 2.5 cbm, would that be a problem? No, not really. OH and I have both taken the day off and have pencilled in "Wood stacking". Hope it won't rain.


By 9.30am, the first log pile is in our driveway and OH and I get into our by now well-oiled routine: I stack the handcart, drive the wood down the garden, and OH stacks it.

It's noon now, and the first pile is gone from the driveway. Time for a well-deserved cup of tea and some lunch, then on to the second leg. When it's just the two of us in the house, the gas heating isn't on during the day (though it was when the munchkins were staying). We've set it so that it only comes on for 2 hours in the early morning to get the towel rail warm -- yet the living room, thanks to a first burn of the stove this morning, is a balmy 23 degrees and the hallway a very acceptable 21 degrees. I have said it before and will say it again: up yours, energy giants, you greedy, exploitative, cartel-forming, yet still perma-whingeing vampiric entities, you. Raise prices -- again! -- by 9%plus just when winter arrives. Don't you dare bull us with your lame excuses like "investment" and "government taxes". My money goes into the local economy and into sustainable wood management and there's nothing you lot can do about it. You will get the bare minimum out of us. And if you send your incredulous meter-reading people round because "something must be wrong with it", we'll give those good working people a nice cup of tea and a biscuit and sit them in front of our lovely warm stove and spell it out to them, carefully, so that they'll pass it up the management tree, why our gas bill is low, even in the midst of winter.

Which, incidentally, is about to arrive: the wind will turn and will be blowing from the north, bringing cold air to us by the end of the week. Time to sit down in front of a roaring fire and sample OH's wines and carve a pumpkin for Halloween.