T-shirt and flip flop weather

     All the Brits I know love to talk about the weather.  It is one of the main questions I get asked whenever I met a new person who is British or English, or Scottish, or Welsh, or whatever they are calling themselves this week.   Most of them think I will comment about how nasty it is or how cold and wet or something along those lines.  Truth be told - I love the British weather, possibly much more than they do!  So it is common for them to complain about the weather and grumble about it, grouse about it, swear at it, and leave it whenever possible.   I am happy to be in it where there are actual seasons: spring, summer, fall, winter.  And each season has its own charm and characteristics and accompanying weather.

     A very common British past-time is to head to Spain or Italy or Greece during any break they have (from school or work) whenever the weather dips below 20C (around 70F - roughly).   A good status symbol is to show up at work during the winter with a tan!  Obviously it means you are rich and lucky enough to have gone somewhere warm enough to sit out in the sun for a few days.  

      I personally have a very small comfortable temperature range.  It is a joke in my family that I am most comfortable when the temperature is around 68F to 72F.  Anything different and I start complaining about being too hot or too cold.  The thermostat gets twisted around, clothes come on, clothes come off, blankets on or off the beds, whatever.  All this is probably going to cause problems when we retire to Florida!  But I have gotten much better at being out of doors in England in a much wider variety of temperatures.  As such, I can run around outside when the weather is in the teens (10-16C) with just a hoodie and stay fairly OK.  Any colder, and I am reaching for a good coat, good gloves and scarf or hat as well.

     It is amazing that when I am bundled up, there are still many Brits who are so used to their cold winter weather that I am passing them on the street where they are wearing just their t-shirt, jeans, and flip flops!  I've seen so many Brits dressed in this standard "uniform" at 10C or even 5C.  I feel quite proud of myself that I have extended my range of comfortable temperatures but I don't think I'll ever get that comfortable.

     Yesterday I went out with a friend and it was cold enough for it to snow on us briefly and for me to have a very warm coat and gloves.  She had on a sweater and that was it!  No fleece, no gloves, no coat, no hat.   We had to even stand outside for about 10 minutes and I didn't see her shiver once!  When asked, she said she was used to it because they don't have central heating in their house!  No heating!   OMG.  I definitely would have a hard time with that.  The few times our boiler has broken in the middle of cold weather, I've not been able to function without so many layers that I couldn't function anyway because I couldn't move!

     So my husband and I now joke about whether the weather is T-shirt and flip flop weather or fleece weather or heavy coat weather.  In all instances - we're talking winter weather!

Boilers/Furnaces/Icy Windows

When we were first moving to England, now over 3 years ago (yes, wow!), they asked us what we wanted in our house.  Having been in and out of Houston, Texas for many years, the first thing we asked for was air conditioning.  That request drew many a laugh from the various real estate agents, leasing agents, and human resources people dealing with our move "across the pond".  We did know, through years of television and movie conditioning, that England was probably cold and damp and rainy but we just assumed it would be hot on occasion too.  The cold and damp far outweighs the warm and sunny or hot.

So obviously we didn't get a house with air conditioning.  There are some available but well beyond our price means and few and far between.  We actually found our house by ourselves.  We got three days with an agent who drove us furiously around burrow and dale and roundabouts to various houses in one village or town or another with us usually having no clue where we were in relation to my husband's job or in relation to anything.  We found a house on a hill in a lovely neighborhood and a great back garden and fantastic master bedroom and said we wanted this house.  Well, took two weeks with the owner putting more and more obstacles in our way until we said forget it and had about 2 weeks left on our allotted time (before our furniture and household goods arrived via sea) to now find a house.  We found this one in the paper and fell in love with it immediately.  It backs up to a golf course down a long driveway and few neighbors.  Not the best kitchen I wanted but private and enough room, we thought, no air conditioner - ha ha - but nice, really, really nice.  And luckily, the owner was willing to get out in time for our shipment to arrive.

So we moved into the house and we are still here.  Some winters we have been dealing with a really flaky boiler which we have learned is the British equivalent of a furnace.  In the states, furnaces are huge things that take up an entire closet and lots of tubing and duct work to take the heat through the house and blow hot air out grates in the floor or wall or ceiling.  Here the boiler is this small box that sits on the wall and runs furiously in the winter.  I'm sure there must be other parts to it in various walls or the attic (loft) but my focus is on this small box and the blinking lights.  When the lights are on, we have heat and when they are blinking, we are in trouble.

Two winters we have been in trouble.  Last winter, during the coldest part of the winter, we had blinking lights and the blasted thing was out for several days.  Odd - to us - the automotive rescue service - their automobile association - AA - came by to bring us 4 small electric heaters which work amazingly well and could heat up a whole room to unbearable levels in a couple of hours.  The boiler worked for a few weeks and then, in another very cold week, it started the blinking lights again.  This time, my husband was able to look inside and attach the small hose that had come undone.  Now we automatically check this hose whenever we get the blinky lights and it seems to fix it most of the time.

This winter the fan went out.  We had a few days of awful whirling noises and then blinking lights and no heat.  Luckily we have those 4 electric heaters.  I just have to watch them to ensure the cats don't sit too close to them.  Only took a couple of days to fix it this time but we didn't get cold due to the electric heaters.  Our electric bill was sky high for that month but we were warm.

So we have gotten used to this radiator/boiler system which works quite well.  In most of our rooms, there is at least one radiator and we have to turn it down considerably to keep the room warm but not overly hot.  The cats know which radiators are running and that's usually where we can find them, curled up in front of one of the working radiators.

I was talking to some English friends about the various differences between heating and air conditioning between here and the states and learned, to my amazement, that there are still many homes in England that exist without a boiler, furnace, radiator, or any means of heating other than the stove.  I'd heard of "cold water flats" and suddenly it made sense.  I didn't know they still existed but apparently they do and aren't that uncommon.  I know of at least 4 families with no source of heat other than a fireplace in one or two rooms and a stove in the kitchen.  One family I know uses electric heaters exclusively.  My friend complains about their electric bill - but they haven't taken any steps to put in radiators or a boiler so I guess they are happy enough with their circumstances.

The old English standard stove - the Aga - was made for running constantly, year in and year out, and kept the kitchen boiling hot in summer and toasty warm in winter.  That stove makes sense if it is your only source of heat.  My friends were telling me how they gauge what clothes to wear by whether there is ice on the inside of their windows in the morning.  Ice on the inside!!!  My gosh.  I don't think I've lived anywhere quite so cold since I was a child and actually had an outhouse for use rather than indoor plumbing.  I hated to go to the bathroom in the winter.  

So all the progress in the world and there are still people with no heat - and they live just fine that way and have adapted to it.  My one set of friends would no sooner leave their home than they would fly to the moon.  They love it - heat-less and all.  I have other British friends who were just as amazed as I was that such homes still were around.   The world has many wonders - both modern and "old fashioned".  I am lucky enough to be able to see both ends of the spectrum.

And Not in This wet suit

     Last weekend was a bank holiday and as it coincided with my husband's every other Friday off work, it gave us a four day weekend so off we went.  This time, we went to Sardinia.  It's a pretty big island so we rented a car.  Our original intent was to scuba dive for a day and if we liked it and there was lots to see, we'd do a second day.  So we had made arrangements to stay on the north end of the island where there were several dive shops.  We flew into Olbia and then got our little Fiat Panda and drove up with hilly, twisty, winding road.  Speed limits were around 55 mph but I don't see how anyone could keep up that speed as it was up and down and back and forth and around and around!  We did finally make it to our hotel though and then walked into town to check out the dive shop.

     My husband and I are definitely fair weather divers.  We don't like the cold and we don't like currents but we do love to dive.  They had warned us it would be cold but said they could outfit us without a problem.  We found the shop and they gave us some wet suits to try.  I don't think I've ever seen a wet suit this thick!  I don't think I even knew they made them this thick.  OMG.  AND since I don't normally wear a wet suit, I was in the bathroom struggling and struggling to put it on backwards!    Double OMG.  realized my mistake and by that time, I was exhausted but peeled it off and turned it around and realized  it wasn't going to fit anyway.  Called in my hubby to help me peel it off the parts I had gotten it over and we got another one to try.

     Again, struggling and struggling.  The material of the wet suit if very unyielding and my arthritic hands are just not having a lot of luck pulling this up over the "puffier" parts of my body.  squirming and jumping and pulling and stomping and shaking and twisting and sweating, sweating, sweating.  I am such a fair weather diver and when my husbands tells me that they are going to give us yet ANOTHER shorty wet suit to wear over this longer one, I suddenly lost all desire to dive this week.  Reverse procedure and start pulling it all off and struggling to get out and then putting on my clothes over my sweating tired body and telling them that we might just have to come back when the water is much warmer and when is that by the way?  So best laid plans and all.  No diving this weekend but the photos were wonderful that we saw and there apparently are fish to see and things to do while diving in the Mediterranean so we will have to give it a go sometime.  Just now with a 9mm wetsuit plus shorty on top.  Not sure it will ever get warm enough for us but we'll keep an eye on the temps and try.