Andy Richardson: Fighting off the draughts has become a way of life
Ahh bliss. I’d forgotten what it was like to have to wear three pairs of trousers and five hoodies. Indoors. But winter is here and those of us stupid enough to favour draughty old houses now find ourselves neck-deep in layered fabrics.
Global warming is a thing. That much we all know. It’s just not reached our neck of the woods yet. Particularly not the room with a space around the 180-year-old sash window that’s wide enough to poke a finger through. But that’s another jumper and pair of jogging bottoms.
I’m not sure why, when and where I developed a penchant for what estate agents euphemistically call ‘houses with character’. Growing up in a normal, suburban semi clearly didn’t set me on the path to become the Ray Mears of property ownership.
My first house, bought a week before my 21st birthday, was a modern, new-build semi at the back of a fire station. Magnolia walls, double glazing and a modern central heating system. Fabulous. If only I’d made similar choices over the next 30 years.
But no. Somewhere, somehow I decided to fall in love with high ceilings, sash windows and houses that haven’t had a builder inside them since Queen Victoria reigned. Or perhaps George III. Why live in an environmentally-responsible modern home when you can delight at gaps in the floorboards so wide that mice can squeeze through each evening – thank you, cats, for taking care of that particular problem – and when the house is as well ventilated as a bus stop? Bliss.
At least we don’t have to worry about damp.
The fixation started, I suppose, when I returned to the West Midlands after buying a modern(ish) flat in London. Pah, I thought. Why bother with a well-insulated home when I can live in an old railway cottage that has a sandstone cave instead of a back garden?
From there, it was onto something even older: a delightfully cold 150-year-old terrace. I tried heating it one year then realised I couldn’t afford to keep up and so took the only sensible option when winter returned the following year: switched off the central heating.
I didn’t realise, of course, that I’d cause so much damage through the accumulation of damp that I could have paid the central heating bill three times over.
And so the best thing to do was sell up and leave – moving into an even bigger, even older, even draughtier place. Though it did have gorgeous ceilings and lovely sashes.
And so for 15 years, we shivered through winter. An open fire kept some of the drafts at bay, though seeing a bus drive past was followed within seconds by a tsunami of cold air as the windows operated like sheets of Swiss cheese and we perfected our inside-outside-living schtick.
Eventually, it became too much and I spent just shy of £20,000 on double glazing the thing. Bliss.
Our first, double-glazed winter was unlike any I’d ever known. No drafts. No condensation. No need to call the builder every time a bus drove past.
And then, having found the solution to two decades of draughty living, I did the thing that all serial idiots do: moved to a big, old draughty house.
There is central heating in it, though switching it on during days when Storm Edna – or whatever name it is – is blowing is a bit like throwing a bucket of water at a raging inferno. It’s gesture politics. An act of pointlessness as spectacularly pointless as Boris Johnson’s spokeswoman trying to explain away the reasons why he talks to business leaders about Peppa Pig.
And so winter is here. A tree has blown over at the end of the lane. Another one is blocking the main road. And the wind is blowing into my home office with the ferocity of a Force Nine that buffets a cod trawler. I’ve not yet needed to hit Peak Layer – the five sweatshirts and three pairs of joggers that were required last year have not yet been aired.
Of course, there is another way. I could bite the bullet and get it double glazed.
Though if I did, I’d probably sell up and buy another draughty old house.
