Not Draughty Enough!

A cosy fire in the Living Room

Not draughty enough? Now there's a complaint you probably don't hear many times about houses. Back when we were buying this place as a bit of a sorry wreck in need of huge amounts of renovation, it was as draughty as you'd expect from any old 1850's farmhouse, unloved for 15 years - loose windows, badly fitting doors, dodgy air-bricks, damp voids under rotting and gappy floor boards, chimneys unused for years full of jackdaw nests and so on. You could light a fire in either of the fire places (one upstairs, one down) or in the old disintegrating Rayburn range and they would burn a treat, drawing plenty of air and happily exhausting their heat and fumes up the chimneys into the clean Roscommon air.

An old pillow stuffed up the chimney.

When we arrived with our gutting and rebuilding, our concrete floors (no air bricks!), our new double glazing throughout, our dry-lining and our sweeping out the jackdaw debris, our new efficient range and rebuilt fire-places, we changed all that. We now have an almost entirely draught-free house which is dead easy to heat and keep warm, mostly. Mostly? What we quickly discovered on moving in and starting to use the house, was that it is possibly not draughty enough. It is basically a rectangular box with a chimney at either end. The upstairs fireplace (in the main bedroom) was all but boarded up with the dry-lining sheets but we left a small hole as a vent and a way to rescue birds which might fall down the chimney. The hole, about 6 inches square, has a cheap, plastic, slide-closed cover over it mainly for the look of the thing.

Twin exhausts? One fire, two smoking chimneys

If we did not use the Living Room fire for a few days in cold weather, the chimney chilled down and the air in it would tend to sink down into the room. The Range going in the Dining Room was happy to use this air as its main source of draught, so by about day 3, a veritable cascade of frosty air was coming down the Living Room chimney and spreading out across the floor so that anyone sitting in there was getting very cold feet. Not good. Our first answer to this was to light a fire in that fireplace once a week to re-heat the flue and reverse the flow. If we tried to get both ends hot at once , the two fires would pull air from anywhere, including the blanked off bedroom flue. Smoke coming up the Living Room chimney would be sucked back down the bedroom flu and out through the cheap plastic vent to fill the bedroom and landing with smoke - which was rather alarming. I think there may also be some loose masonry and leaks between the flues below pot-height, as (see picture) when you first light the fire, you get smoke from both chimneys.

Yesterday we got a little fed up with this and decided to investigate fully and do something about it. We needed to stop the downward sinking of cold air. We knew that back in the day, people would have (sometimes ornate) screens in the fire place 'hole' to block the flow. We wondered whether a lump of shaped foam wedged up there would have a similar effect. In the end we settled on an old pillow wedged up into the hole and, Bingo, no more foot-chilling draft. Today we have lit a goodly fire in the fireplace (obviously, taking out the pillow first!) to re-warm the hearth and surrounds, and tomorrow when this fire is done, we will re-wedge our pillow and see if we can keep that room warm with no fire until, coming up to Christmas, when we tend to gravitate in there and curl up with books, we will be lighting a fire daily anyway. This is mainly "for the coze" and will make it a nicer place for the Christmas guests.

Blue likes a warm car bonnet.

The first cat, of course, can happily find warmth without all this scientific air-flow malarkey. He is pictured here adopting the car bonnet on our return from shopping. The lad, though is in the dog house. The problem with having a cat who is good at ratting and mousing, is that they also end up good at catching birds and yesterday I found him playing with a female blackbird. He'd plucked most of the feathers off her back and shoulders and he was pouncing on her as soon as she tried to move from her 'splatted' chest-on-the-grass position. Generally, the victim is so damaged at that point that if you try to prise it away from him, Blue he just sinks his teeth in and it is game over. However, I grabbed him by the scruff before he could  do this and rescued the bird which looked quite perky and alert, and was very warm to the touch. I rescued it to the Tígín to rest for the night and recover - it was almost night time by then. Sadly, the little bird did not make it and presumably succumbed to internal injuries.

Anonymous bottle.

If external warmth is not your thing, then do join me in a wee dram of poitín (potcheen). I think I must have the kind of face which says to shop-keepers that a) I might like a drop of 'moonshine' and b) I can be trusted to be offered same. So on a Christmas shopping mission today (no names, no pack drill, no shops and no presents revealed!) I had another conversation which started with chat about the present (shhhh) but ended up with 'What spirit do you use on the plum pud'n?". Suspecting which way this conversation might be going, I said "Well, probably not with poitín, so maybe brandy or whiskey..." "Why would you not use poitín?" "Mainly because we don't have any". Shopkeeper then took for all the purchases but said "Sure, wait there a minute" and vanished out to the back of the shop. He reappeared with a bottle labelled "Paddy (3 times distilled) Whiskey" but containing a clear, colourless liquid, and proceeded to pour a measure into the bottle's screw-top. Very warming. To cut a long story short we bought the bottle and Liz drove home! She smelled my breath when I came out of the shop, and when she had finished giggling and saying "Why does it only happen to you?"

Tsipouro! Yammas!

Mum returned from Greece with a small amount of a drink which was new to Dad, it being the local fire-water, "Tsipouro". Absolutely clear in colour this is 'pomace brandy', pomace being "the solid remains of grapes, after pressing for juice. It contains the skins, pulp, seeds, and stems of the fruit". It is around 47% proof, so not quite as lethal as good old Irish over-proof Poitín (Potcheen) and, it will not surprise you to know, was first produced by some Greek Orthodox Monks (weren't all these dodgy spirits?) up a mountain. According to Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsipouro  ) " Depending on the time of year, tsipouro is used either as refreshment or as a hot beverage, and depending on the time of day, it replaces the drinking of coffee or wine. Tsipouro and tsikoudia, as with all alcoholic beverages in Greece, always seem to coincide with various social gatherings, as their consumption had a festive and symposium-like quality.

It is usually served in shot glasses, very cold, often with meze, walnuts, almonds, raisins, feta cheese, olives, or accompanying halva or other desserts in restaurants.

In 2006, Greece filed a request to recognise tsipouro as a PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) product.

We say 'Yammas' (Cheers) to that!

Much to everyone's amazement, I reach my 6th Birthday (on Monday 17th), and so, too, do my sister, Ellie, back in Faversham, and my Brother Archie, back in Maidstone. The word is that I have matured into a very sensible, capable, well balanced dog and a good 'Auntie' to the kindergarten. Cynics say that this is because I was always wishing I was a favourite only dog and I am happier that way so that I just had to contrive to remove Megan, Haggis and Coco from any position superior to, or threatening, mine and I'd be home and dry. All I have to do now is make sure Blue, Rolo, Towser, Poppy, assorted rabbits and poultry and any other arrivals stay subservient and I should remain well adjusted to the end of my natural puff. Yammas to that, too.

Mike-the-Cows's herd have now pretty much eaten off all the grass on Vendor Anna's land and on our bits so, yesterday, were moved off to give the grass a chance to recover and for them to get some grub on less grazed turf. Dad loves that the local farming mags talk about something called the 'rate of thrive' which is basically the rate at which cows put on weight in kg per day. These are beef animals so success is all about the weight of the carcase at slaughter. The farmer either buys them in at a known weight or breeds them himself, but then has to spend x amount of money on grazing or on concentrates per day, hoping that at the end the weight will have gone up sufficiently that they have made more in carcase value (weight) than he has spent getting them to that weight. I gather it can be a bit knife-edge at the moment with a poor Summer having given them poor grass growth and a lot of them having to eat into stored silage which was meant to see them through winter. Also, says Mike, with cows being worth anything from €700 up to and over €3000, you've only got to lose one to sickness or an accident and you may have no margin left this year at all. Mike seems to be doing OK, though he'd never admit that!

Yammas!

Deefer