ALL CHANGE

I am going to give up on dressing myself in summer clothes. By about two o'clock this afternoon I had completely changed my outfit.   

Almost as soon as I had finished dressing this morning, my cotton top with elbow length sleeves was hidden by my fleece.  For added warmth I zipped it up.  My twenty-seven inches of skirt did quite a good job as far as it went, however, from below my bare knees to my toes I developed purple skin and goose bumps. Not nice. An hour later I gave in, put on a pair of tights and slipped my feet back into my open sandals.

The sandals were not, I decided, the best footwear for a walk. Why not then, change into a pair of shoes and a longer skirt- ankle length would do - to give added warmth. So, that is what I did. The sleeveless quilted zip top over my fleece finished off the outfit.  

The weather had other ideas as I saw when I stepped outside. In the near distance a haa headed in my direction and I felt a light spray on my face.  My washing! I dived back into the house and out to the garden to unpeg my very damp laundry.

Time for another change of clothing; this time I put on a hat, my gilet was replaced with a warm coat and I wore a pair of gloves. We had a lovely and slightly circuitous walk into town through Scotch Mist, passing by fairy circles, which we saw on the communal green. The toes of my shoes got a bit wet on the grass....it really did not matter.  My feet were warm and dry and so was I.

THE PAST AND THE PRESENT

My radiators are covered with items of clothing at various stages of drying. It's not that I am stingy about using the the tumble-dryer and using fuel; it is that my consciousness has been assaulted with being economic with the earth's resources. I work much like the local farmers do, observing weather patterns, waiting to quickly take and use any windows of opportunity. In my case, I wait for half decent weather so I can peg out the washing to dry in what nature can provide for the purpose. As the season changes the opportunities to dry the washing outside will contract. 

I am almost wistful for bygone days when rooms in houses were large enough to sustain a wooden dryer fixed with a pulley, which rose to the ceiling. We had one, when I was young, and it settled in a high area in line with the rising heat from the coal range, mostly used for heating. Those were the days of city smog. I would not wish that back. With the thought in mind, I have been eying up any spaces that might accommodate a pulley dryer/airer. The obvious one would be our utility area, but that is far too narrow.

Damp is another issue to think about. These days, with smaller room sizes and the encouragement to insulate houses well, ventilation is more restricted. On the other hand if a house is heated with dry heat, a little moisture might balance things off a bit. The correct balances could be difficult to achieve.

Increasing heating costs focus the mind and the purse. Where I live, there are very limited periods when the heating is completely off during the year. The thinking cap will have to go on again. Meantime, the airers over the radiators and the radiators themselves will have to do their best to support the ecological argument on the basis that every little helps it, and also, every little helps to support the domestic economy drive.

CANNONING DUMBO

We went out last Sunday, (22nd May) just before noon, in temperatures a bit unfriendly for me for the time of year. I tempted fate by wearing pink cropped trousers, and a red cotton V-necked Tee top. Because we are in the far north, I also slipped on a zip up micro-fleece and over the top of it, a quilted gilet. My visible homage to late Spring was what could be seen of my bare calf muscles to my ankles, bordered with my trainer socks peeping out from my trainers.

The strategy was to walk away from the direction of the wind. We passed a bay of well camouflaged basking seals,continued tramping along the edge of a field, then came to some sloping grassland that curved round to a rocky outfall. That is when we got blasted by heavy rain! We beat a hasty retreat the way we came, the only way, getting very wet before we reached the shelter of the car, where, we took stock of our washed out plans.

My last thought when we went out on Sunday morning, (before shutting the door) was whether I should have got some washing done 'in between weather’ for putting outside on the line to dry. The blunt and obvious answer is, with hindsight (in this case foresight) very definitely, “no”. We really have been blasted with fierce chilly winds this week. When the weather has been dry, the winds have been forceful enough to dry heavy towels very quickly, so long as they were well pegged. Sheets that were rinsed because bird muck landed on them, also benefitted from quick drying.

I had visions of me being clawed and lifted by the winds as I grappled to get billowing washing off the line; it, (the winds) blasting me off to the Outer Hebrides with a heavy towel and a bed sheet following in my wake. I would be no Mary Poppins, umbrella held high floating elegantly off into the hazy distance - I would arrive more like a startled cannoned Dumbo The Elephant.