Coal fire (by alaric)

One of the definite plusses of living in a proper village is that we have a local blacksmith.

Now, our house has a dual-fuel burner that, with a grate in, can burn coal, or without the grate is for wood. Sadly, the grate was a molten blob; it looked like somebody had tried to light a fire with liquid oxygen...

So we took it up to said blacksmith, who for a mere twenty pounds made it as good as new. We were given a bag of coal as a thank-you present from somebody, so using my military surplus trenching tool as an ash shovel and a pair of spoons as impromptu tongs, we've had coal fire for two days in a row now.

Why coal, you may ask, when we can go and pick up free firewood from the grounds? Well, the rate we get through wood makes it look doubtful we could manage purely on gathered wood, plus it saves a lot of time to not have to gather and chop the wood. We still need wood to get the fire started, so it's not like the wood will go to waste; but rather than buying extra wood, as we were, we'll spend less buying coal and take up less space storing it.

Indeed, we've used barely the top quarter of a small sack of coal so far; in the same time, we'd have burned up a fair pile of logs, involving more work feeding them in regularly, and more heat lost to evaporating the water in the wood. And I grew up with coal; it's familiar to me, and I find it easy to regulate.

However, when I went outside just now to put things on the compost heap, I realised that our house now has whiffs of the smell of coal smoke around it - smells that fondly remind me of visiting Wales!

Snuffles (by alaric)

Jean has a cold! Her first taste of sickness.

She's snuffling and sneezing and coughing, and her eyes are puffed and watering, but she's not letting it get her down - she's a bit grumpier than usual, but she still smiles at us and her toys! I'm quite impressed; I don't think I could be very cheery if I felt as rough as she looks.

We're keeping her well supplied with Karvol (stuff for children that releases menthol vapours) and trying to keep her warm and comfortable.

Nooooo! Van!!! (by alaric)

Just had a phonecall from the friend who was borrowing our lovely van - he was just driving it back, when it made rattling noises, so he pulled over and now it won't start 🙁

The fear is that it may have run out of oil and seized, since it has a known propensity to get through oil fast (as many old diesels do). However, no warning light came on.

Please be OK, van!

= UPDATE =

Looks like it did run out of oil; the engine's all seized up inside.

However, luckily, Sarah's uncle is a mechanical engineer, and has managed to find us a nice Transit engine that's even newer than the one in the van - and he can install it for us! So the van is going to have something of an upgrade to a turbo diesel engine - a new lease of life...

Phew!

Snow in Gloucestershire (by alaric)

It snowed, which made a very picturesque scene of the Mill:

However, alas, it had all been washed away by rain the next morning...

Local community (by alaric)

The village we live near, Cranham, has a particularly strong community, which we are slowly working our way into (limited somewhat by the fact that we have very little free time right now).

So today we went along to a Christmas carol singing event at the village hall. Our very own GP was there ringing handbells, and afterwards we chatted to some of our new neighbours; including a lady who (like me) grew up only seeing from one eye (and thus had a very similar experience of problems with depth perception), and another lady whose first job had been programming in assembly language and COBOL in the 1960s (on PROPER computers with punched cards).

Mmmm, people with things in common with me... and they're all so friendly. It's a far cry from life in London, or indeed in Luton where I grew up.

This is going to be a lovely place for Jean to grow up! I really need to start getting involved more in local life, though - I've been idly discussing with a few people that the school's nice optical fibre Internet connection could be share with nearby residents (who can't get good ADSL due to our distance from the exchange) with a wireless bridge... and there are myriad societies to join...