Sheffield, England (Circa 1957-1965): We (the English) have spent thousands of years learning how to warm up our houses; the thought of cooling one down simply never occurred to us...
As you may have heard, England is not exactly famed for its tropical climate. Even today, no one I know in England has air-conditioning in their house; instead, they concentrate on trying to warm things up... which (and I know this will surprise you) reminds me of my younger days...
In addition to a small kitchen and pantry, our house had two main rooms downstairs: the front (family) room and the dining room. Upstairs there were two main bedrooms, a small "box room", and the bathroom and toilet. (Remember that this is England we're talking about; when I say "main rooms" or "big rooms" we're actually talking about something only approximately 14 feet by 12 feet in size ... but they were big to us.)
When the house was first built, it had coal fires in the two large downstairs rooms and also in the two main bedrooms. By the time I came along, the fireplaces in the bedrooms had been covered over and there was a small gas fire in each of the main rooms downstairs.
Our house didn't have a garage. However, my parent's friends – a retired couple called Mr. and Mrs.Gill – lived some way down the road and around the corner from us; they had a garage but no car, so they allowed us to park our car at their house.
A typical scenario involved my mother, father, and myself coming back from somewhere (let's say it was a winter pantomime at a theatre down town). We'd park our car in Mr. and Mrs. Gill's garage and walk up the road to our house. It being winter, there would almost invariably be a freezing damp wind blowing in our faces (it doesn't matter as to the direction you're walking in Sheffield ... the wind is always cold and damp and blowing in your face).
When we arrived home, one of my parents would light the gas fire in the front room while the other would make us all a cup of hot, sweet tea (the cure for all ills and the answer to all crises in England). Then, still in our outdoor coats, but with the buttons undone) we'd huddle on the floor in a semicircle around the pitifully weak gas fire waiting for the temperature to rise above freezing.
Eventually, the room warmed to the extent that we could discard our coats, but we remained sitting on the floor near the fire for quite some time until the heat finally managed to limp its way across to the sofa and chairs.
Going to bed was also something of an adventure. If it was really, REALLY cold, I would be equipped with a rubber hot water bottle. Most of the time, however, it was a case of girding oneself up, taking a running jump into a freezing bed, and then wriggling around furiously trying to generate enough friction to warm things up (Ah, the good old days).
Sometime around the mid-1960s, my parents had a central heating system installed. This involved a gas-fired plant located behind the chimney in the dining room feeding hot water radiators in all of the other rooms. This was amazing ... we could leave the system "ticking over" while we were out, and set it to leap into action about half-an-hour before we returned from wherever we were going.
For years afterwards, whenever we entered the house and it was actually warm, we stopped to bask in the wonder of what we considered to be the absolute latest-and-greatest in modern technology...
Comments (0)
