Winter is Coming

 Nope. This isn't a post about GoT which I'm far too squeamish to watch. It's Day 14 of Blogtober and Ive decided to write about what I've been up to this week.

I've had a busy couple of days getting more Vitamin B12 injections to correct a fairly serious deficiency and obviously boosted by this I've been moving furniture in preparation for winter even though I ended up sweating in my woolly jumper this afternoon.

We are in that weird spell in the UK where days can start off chilly, foggy and distinctly wintery (check out the view from my kitchen door just days ago below)  then just hours later you can sit in the garden in a nice sunny patch in a T-shirt.

Take today for instance. Driving my youngest to college this morning I had the heated seats on in the car. I was alternately being blinded by the low autumn sun or thick patches of fog. My son who'd come out in a T-shirt shivered and expressed regret for his life choices while I felt smug in a fleecy jacket.

Fast forward four hours and I had all the exterior doors open and washing rapidly drying on the line.

Still, in the words of  Game of Thrones, winter IS coming and having written about my love of furniture moving recently I manifested the urge to actually do it so the last two days have seen me rearranging the conservatory yet again. I've piled a load of no longer loved items for the recycling centre to be packed into the car and finally sorted the last of the things abandoned here by my recent graduated son including most of his shoes.

"Why now?" I hear you ponder (humour me). Well, I've always been an early adopter of Christmas decorations and with my clear-out I now have room for a six-footer to take pride of place in the conservatory which we use as a dining room on special occasions including Christmas. I used to wait for December at least to deck the halls but nowadays it's highly likely I'll be hoovering up needles from mid November onwards. Actually, not really because it's so fecking cold in that conservatory most of the time that it holds any plant-life in some type of cold stasis.  Unless it's summer then even cacti which could live happily in the Gobi Desert shrivel in the superheated air.

Because of the arctic ambiance we pre-heat the room if we plan to eat in there. Previously we had one of those electric log burners but seeking space in the conservaotry for the aforementioned tree, and finally accepting that due to my husband's lung disease and imminent need to have highly flammable oxygen in the house not to mention the wellbeing of the environment and local air quality, we probably shouldn't continue to use our open fire. So, I have relocated the fake log burner to the hearth in the living room where it is currently warming my husband's toes. I worked out it costs 62p an hour to use but warms the room really quickly so you don't need to have it on long to banish a chill and is more efficient than turning the heating on in a largely empty house.

Meanwhile in the South Pole conservatory we have a very efficient "smart" ceramic heater which i can turn on or schedule via an app. So no more darting into the igloo to turn the fire on in time to be able to eat Christmas breakfast without a snowsuit- I can have it toasty in time for my first coffee in front of my giant Christmas tree.