by Chris Cowland –
Sometimes we take for granted some of the small things in life. Every house has a dial or a push button on the wall. Too hot? Crank it down. Too cold? Crank it up. The joy of central heating … that is, until the worst wind storm in 50 years brings down power lines and leaves you in the middle of a cold, dark winter’s night. We set off on Boxing Day for the cottage at Lake Cowichan, only to find that two trees had brought down our hydro line almost a week previously.
The house was at 10°C, exactly the same temperature as the contents of our thoroughly thawed freezer. The British have several descriptive phases for this weather condition – “as cold as a witch’s spit” (or something similar) and another anatomical reference to brass monkeys. Brits know cold!
My house in England was built in 1885. The walls were solid brick, no insulation. The windows were single glazed. Drafts would blow through the wooden floorboards that vented directly outdoors.
On many occasions, the lead water pipes would freeze in the bathroom but, unlike several neighbours, we had an inside loo, not an outhouse. We were privileged! If you left clothes soaking in the bath, you might have to chip them out of the ice in the morning.
There was no central heating. The only sources of heat were two small coal fires in the living room and dining room. When you light a wood stove, you are rapidly rewarded with a crackle of sparks and almost instant heat. Coal, on the other hand, has more in common with the above-mentioned witches. Just as your last paper and kindling dwindles to extinction, you might barely create a small, red spark in the black heart which you blow on until your lungs are expiring. Two hours later, you are rewarded with a few candle power of heat, but by then it’s time to go to bed.
One of my family heirlooms from my Grandmother in Wales was a long-handled, copper lidded pan, called a “warming pan.” You would scoop fireplace embers into this gadget, run up the stairs to the bedroom, swish it between the sheets for a few minutes, replace it safely in the fireplace, then run back into bed before those few precious calories dissipated back into the permafrost.
That would be my daily routine when I worked in London for Price Waterhouse, commuting through the winter rain on my motorbike. The rain gear that everyone wore in those days was made by a company called Bellstaff. It consisted of wax-impregnated pieces of canvas which worked for a couple of weeks, and then acted more like blotting paper. You would arrive wetter on the inside than on the outside. If Lucas electrical systems gave rise to the nickname “Prince of Darkness,” Bellstaff was “Lord of the Leaks.”
Lake Cowichan on Boxing Day brought me a stark, abrupt memory of those days, but there was no warming pan. I couldn’t even persuade “man’s best friend” to be a substitute: she ran off and snuggled into her dog blanket. My wife was already asleep in our only sleeping bag. I shivered uncontrollably in bed for about 15 minutes, thinking of my spartan youth. Then the brandy kicked in!
