Heart surgery

One of the best things and worst things about our cottage is the sulky lump of metal in the kitchen, the Rayburn. It is the warm heart of the cottage, always ticking over providing a gentle heat, heating our water and when it has a mind to it cooks our meals. You get used to the fact that it takes between half an hour and four days to get hot enough to fry a rasher of bacon, or its stubborn refusal to cook a Sunday roast when the wind is in the wrong direction or the planets are not aligned to its liking.

But we have soldiered on, putting up with its foibles, the need for the SAS to come and sort it out when it tries to set fire to yours truly or when it shuts down in a sulk having been made to cook three meals in a day.

It also runs our central heating, but we have seldom had that on as A) we cannot afford to and B) we are a hardy lot here on the Bonsai Mountain. Just before Christmas, as a precursor to the I will be more organised new years resolution, I dipped the oil tank to see how much of this fabulously expensive liquid we had left. 250 litres, might not be enough to see us through to the new year so frugality reigned supreme just in case we ran out of juice mid cook of Christmas dinner and were forced to finish roasting the turkey on the barbq, again.

Just after Christmas I dipped the tank and made the horrific discovery that we were down to the last 120 litres. Even with my rubbish math I calculated that we were using over 10 litres a day and as the majority of the time the days had been with the Rayburn on tick over, the lowest setting it could be that was an awful lot. Ten litres a day! Or six quids worth it real terms! Drastic measures are now called for, there was no way we could continue burning that much money a day for little return. So the money that would have been spent on more oil has been redirected and arrives in a box tomorrow.

The Rayburn is dead. The oil ran out last Sunday.

The cottage is in need of a heart transplant. One that runs on a renewable source. And we need to be able to cook. Watch this space.