Warm and toasty

After last night's late night, I was hopeful that Reggie would have a lie-in, but no, he started singing and whining at 7.40am. A little later than usual, but not by much. I duly crawled out of bed and took him outside for his morning toilet rounds, gave him breakfast, opened up the goose house and then tried to go back to bed. I dozed a little, but I could hear that Reggie was awake, banging around in his crate, so I got up and went downstairs to sit on the sofa with him and watch a bit of TV. Come 10am we heard stirring from upstairs, and Stuart came plodding wearily downstairs - he looked tired, but actually better than he had done yesterday.

We had pretty much decided yesterday that we would postpone the weekly supermarket shop and give ourselves the day off today, so we spent a leisurely morning on the sofa with Reggie until I remembered I needed to replace the sawdust in the goose house and we realised we didn't have any cat food left - Stuart duly went down the road to Amanda's to buy some emergency sachets of Whiskas while I dealt with the geese.

Not long after we'd finished those jobs, there was a knock at the door and 4 Phillipses in the house. (Not a total surprise - we were expecting them.) Poor Reggie was a little overwhelmed and once we'd managed to stop him barking he kept running to hide behind one of us, but he eventually calmed down and accepted that they came in peace.

In fact, not only did they come in peace but they came to give us a master class in fire lighting/building/maintenance - in other words to teach us how to keep our house warm. While Chris rolled his sleeves up and started cleaning the fire and telling Stuart all about how it works, the boys attempted to play with Reggie outside (he was still a bit too wary to play with them) and Sue and I chatted. As time went on, and Chris put his theory into practice, showing us how to stack the wood up to fill the fire up, which vents to open, when to close them and so on, the temperature in the living room gradually got higher and higher and our visitors even started to take their coats off. The difference in temperature in the house was incredible - after a while, not only did it feel warm throughout the living room, but it felt warm going up the stairs and on the landing and, with bedroom and bathroom doors open upstairs, they too soon started to feel, well, if not actually warm, definitely less chilly and more comfortable. The difference between this and the fires we've been lighting over the last few months was incredible. (Nick and Tess, if you're reading this, the little black magic/Satan fan was spinning so fast it looked as if it might almost take off any second.)

Eventually, after much work, chopping, bringing logs in, stacking the fire, cleaning the fire and all sorts, Chris was happy he had imparted sufficient knowledge to us (well, Stuart at least) to leave us to it. What an amazing gift!!

After the Phillipses had left, we decided to experiment with putting some food on top of the stove to heat up - Stuart had bought some dishes from Amanda that simply needed reheating, so we put those on top of the stove and waited. We only had to wait a matter of a minute or two before we could hear them sizzing and the sauce started boiling! Things got so warm, in fact, that Stuart needed to roll his trousers up. (The idea is that by making the fire this hot, the house itself will start to take on some heat in the walls and start to retain it, making it a much more comfortable temperature overall.)

So hot we cooked lunch on it.

Phew, it's a bit hot in here...

After we'd eaten a late lunch, we took Reggie out for a walk up and down the drive. We didn't really fancy going out anywhere for a walk today and he really didn't look like he was bothered - it seemed that the late night and the excitement of a houseful of strangers were catching up with him and he spent most of the afternoon dozing. For the most part, though, rather than assuming his favourite position on the sofa next to the fire, he curled up in his bed across the other side of the room - I think the fire was simply too hot for him to bear! He enjoyed his walk up and down the drive, but went straight back to his bed when we got in again.

After we'd got the geese into their house for the night, we decided to settle down on the sofa - we'd let the fire die down a little by this point, so it was comfortable to sit there - and watch a film before having an early night. It was the first time in a couple of weeks that I didn't feel the need to take a hot water bottle to bed!