Through the rude wind's wild lament and the bitter weather.

The title of this post consists of a couple of lines from that old classic Yuletide carol Good King Wenceslas which is primarily about saintly behaviour. I wouldn’t know anything about that and so will ignore it and tell you that my main reason for including it in this post is because of it’s references to the harshness of winter conditions and the need to gather “winter fu(ooo)el”.


Ah yes, winter fuel. Where was I on that? I was here, wondering what had become of ours.

In a last ditch attempt at trying to locate our order I phoned the Candle Bridge Carrying Company on Tuesday and used my Stern Voice to scare the man into delivering it. I was given a lot of excuses (none of which included problems with the delivery lorries as previously stated) and was promised (on pain of death, I like to think) that our coal would be with us on Thursday.

Thursday came and I phoned to double check. Yes, our coal would arrive that afternoon...

And lo! it did. There was much rejoicing.



Woooohoooo!

But coal isn't our only source of warmth this year. We're using bees. Not literally. We're not setting fire to them or anything. I don't imagine they would give off much warmth if we did and they probably wouldn't appreciate it either. We’re using the wood waste from the production of beehives. It comes in compact blocks from Burning Blocks and leaves us happy in the knowledge that we're being a little bit more environmentally friendly than we would be if using coal alone. And we're doing our part to support Maisemore Apiaries. So perhaps we are a little saintly after all.



No bees were harmed in the search for winter warmth.