Old Habits Are The Hardest To Break.

If you can't stand the heat...get out of the kitchen!

At about ten o'clock this morning it was already pleasantly hot with the temperature reading in my car giving back an unseemly 31 degrees. Ghastly stuff indeed but with the windows lowered appropriately, bearable. I was on my way to collect medicine for someone in the outlying villages and thus could at least drive with open windows long enough to cool down.

I knocked on the front door which by the way leads straight into her kitchen and was almost knocked over by the heat coming from it. Jeez Louise, what on earth? Why was it hotter than a sauna in there? Well, her son cleared up the mystery...she was cooking on her aga stove. Yes, a blazing hot oven more suited to winter and when I mumbled about why she didn't leave the door open to get some air circulating, she mentioned that the door had to be closed or else her dog would escape...

Anyway, I left eventually and went to see another villager the next village over. All pleasant and nice to catch up but funny too because when I ventured too close to her kitchen, the same thing happened. A wave of warmth mingling with the aromas of an impending lunch were again close to bowling me over.

The irony was that next to this lady's aga stove a new electric stove was standing ready to take over during summer, but the older generation would rather cook and frizzle with on their aga with wood supplied gratis from their bit of forest than needlessly hand over money to the electricity company...Who knows, that could be me one day...

Of course the wood is never as cheap as one thinks because don't forget the huge amount of physical work associated with making fire wood from trees. Me thinks that electricity might be cheaper after all.

Biggi