Save the Planet, Wear a Hat

There are innumerable small things we can do to reduce our energy use (and thus costs, reliance on Russia and the Middle East, etc etc), thereby lessening our impact on the environment. It seems to me that wearing hats during cold weather is one of the easiest.

I bought a Scrooge-style nightcap for my father the other day, not in his case really for warmth, his house being generally over-heated, but for comfort - and it has helped him sleep better. As he is almost as bald as me, maybe it is something to do with keeping his head as warm as his duvet-covered body.



Our house is a tougher prospect to heat, being somewhat larger and having four rather than two storeys. The central heating here can be all on or all off, so rather than heat the entire house while my family is out, we have the radiators off in the middle of the day, and I wear a jumper. This is no sacrifice, it is cosy. If it gets colder I make sure the wood-burner is fired up to keep the chill off the place, and put on slippers and a smoking cap - quickly taken off if the postman or couriers arrive. If I venture out I wear gloves. This is not a difficult concept to master.

When did we start thinking that we should roam the home in shirtsleeves or less all the time? Pepys I recall (though I didn't know him personally) wore a waistcoat in bed until the spring weather arrived. It used to bug me travelling in the USA when I ran a company there that in summer the offices you visited were freezing, and in winter they were boiling, defying the elements and then some. When I drove with salesmen I wore a sweater to combat the aircon which was set at something Scott would have jibbed at. The attitude seemed to be deliberately wasteful of energy. Here in Preston I have noticed over the last couple of years that even in winter many men out shopping wear shorts or cargo pants, and women have jeggings and micro-shorts.



Is it too much of a sacrifice to don a hat and a woolly in winter, provided you have the means to own such? By not having the central heating on all day we must cut our energy bills significantly. Happily, unless I am imagining it, hats are becoming slightly more fashionable again. Or maybe people have cottoned on to how warm they keep us?


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Eco Houses and What They Bring

Grand Designs again. A house built on Skye, which would have looked fine on a Californian beachfront, or perhaps a Swedish forest, but on that island looked as out of place as humility on Boris Johnson's face. It was a fine idea, using clever new methods to ensure the insulation was as good as could be, the builder did a marvellous job, and it was eco in the double sense of being economical as well as environmentally friendly. Except it wasn't friendly to the visual environment, it stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb. Perhaps when the wood bleaches in time it will improve.

I like houses to be different one from the next. The worst place we ever lived was an 'executive estate' where the houses were pretty much little (or big) boxes, and the majority of the people wanted to be shut up in them, scuttling from car to front door in order to avoid social contact. Where we live now there are barely two houses alike, and the people are great - we had a fireworks party last night with a load of neighbours round. Not sure if there is any correlation, but our first home was in a similar area architecturally as where we live now, and again the people were in the main terrific. So different is laudable, desirable, but there are limits - and a wooden shed on Skye probably went beyond them. One truly positive point on that house, however: the architect had done a fantastic job on making the most of the views from within the house, the windows framing the best of them. Pity that from those same views his building would not have enhanced the picture in return.