I headed back home to Scotland in April 2006 to tend to my aging mother and was staying at our house while she was in the hospital for a spell.
The last time my mother was dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th
Century was when she got central heating installed about 15 years ago
or so. The thing that never occurred to me until now, when I return to
an empty and very cold house, is that although the pipes and valves and
gizmos may have been 20th Century the foundational technology was
definitely more 19th Century - it is COAL FIRED. Yes, coal, and trust me the heating system doesn't look anything like a charcoal grill.
Answer me this - how likely do you think it is that a California Condo dwelling homosexual is able to load, stoke, and fire a coal
fueled heating system? Now I've seen Titanic just like everyone else,
but I don't know one end of a boiler from another. Needless to say I
am freezing my ass off staring into a very dark hole in the wall where
a coal fire should be. And even if I wanted to
try, I am under strict instructions from my dear old mother (who I
should declare insane) not to touch or even attempt to get it working,
lest I burn down the entire house, and looking at the place I am SO SO
very tempted. Who installs a coal heating system anyway? I guess coal miners do, and guess whose family were coal miners...!
Large men in large trucks haul heavy bags of the stuff around
to the back of our house, where it is stored in something called a
"bunker". This is actually dual purpose in case zee Germans decide to
attack again. Once the large dirty men leave, my small 70-something
year old mother trundles her way outside into the bitter winter cold
with a bucket to drag the coal back inside to heat the house. I mean, come on. Am I missing something?
Now, just to be clear, since I'm sure someone would get offended - it isn't really old low-tech 19th Century coal, it's fancy 20th Century
coal
called anthracite that doesn't smoke. This is supposed to be a
blessing since otherwise we'd all end up with lung disease and
breathing difficulties when the other 1000 houses in the neighborhood
get their
coal fires going. But, wait, aren't we in the 21st Century now?
I am bringing back lumps of anthracite coal for all of you as gifts and as a reminder why I am FREEZING my ass off.
Unfortunately there is a sequel. And for those who think this is all
fictional or dramatized, I have to sadly and pathetically assure you
that it is not.
Even although I was under strict instructions
not to (under any circumstances) start the coal fire by my hospitalized
aging mother, the sole electric heater that I was carrying from room to
room gave up the ghost. My aunt offered to help stoke & fire up
the boiler since the temperature had since dropped below 0 Celsius and
it was snowing! Who could resist!
I return late that evening to pipes rumbling and rattling in
the walls. My earlier innocent analogy to the Titanic was unfortunate,
since it sounded like the house had hit an iceberg and was going down
fast. As I raced to the bridge (aka mother's bedroom under the
boiler), it had indeed sprung a leak that was running through the
ceiling onto dear old mom's bed and we were sinking fast! Tempted to
man the lifeboats, I managed to keep the house afloat after phone calls
were made, my blood pressure went through the roof, and a very nice and
entertaining local council plumber was called at 1am. With floor
boards and carpets ripped up, a water pump replaced and a thermostat
reset, we were back in business and steaming full ahead! I have since
discovered there are two temperature settings - on and off. One
involves sitting indoors with a down jacket and woolly hat, the other
involves bikinis.
Stage 2 of the "Major Incident Response Plan" was now set in
motion. An expert team of highly experience elderly aunts rushed to
the rescue in "Operation Cover-Up". I informed the guilty aunt who
helped set the unfortunate series of events in motion that "If I was
going down, she was too". Under an unknown deadline, associated with
mother's imminent discharge from hospital, the house needed to be dried
out and returned to normal in the most minute detail. Stage 2 is still
in motion and scheduled to complete by 12 Noon Monday. At 10am on
Wednesday I am scheduled to be on a plane San Francisco bound, at which
point, I hope I never see a coal fired heating system ever again in my
life and I plan to drink heavily all the way home. I am hoping for
plausible denial in the event my mother suspects something happened to
her house, and in the event that she does suspect (or God forbid
discover the truth) I plan to not answer the phone for about 2-6 months
depending on the severity of the backlash.
This is Colin Smith reporting live from a damp but steamy house somewhere in southern snowy Scotland.
