brrr

It really has been cold recently.

Although, surprisingly during the day it's mostly been sunny and when you're in the sun quite warm. I mean, last Sunday it was sufficiently sunny and therefore warm for me to spend the bulk of the day washing the car.

At this time of year I'd expect to have to wrap up really warm and use rubber gloves to keep my hands dry (and so warm) while washing the car, but it wasn't actually necessary. To be fair I wasn't exactly wearing shorts and as the afternoon went on the temperature did suddenly decline, putting paid to my notion of polishing the car as well.

But then in the evenings I've been having to turn the radiators on and up and when I wake up it's really cold. I even broke out the vests this week, although to be fair, the heating at work has always been rubbish, so that's probably not all that good an indicator.

What makes this change in weather more scary is that I've heard predictions that the temperature will actually plunge lower than it did last year - possibly as low as minus 20! That could prove very costly for me from a heating bill point of view.

At the time I hadn't heard these forecasts of doom, but over the last few months I've actually been trying to build up my credit on my electricity meter. This was partly because of all the e-baying - I figured it was a sensible use of some of the money, as the thought of being in a situation of running out is not one I relish.

However, I made a bit of an odd discovery, in that the meter thing will only allow £249 of credit. I was quite a bit below this, but was trying to put another £75, which would have taken it over this limit and it was refusing to take it. This promoted some scrambling around trying to make sure the money had really gone on the key (it's a weird key meter thing), before I eventually called their helpline and discovered the limit.

According to the bloke I therefore need to wait until there's enough room before I can try again, but that'll be a while. I'm hoping (assuming I haven't lost that £75) that the amount I've got will pretty much see me through the winter. If it doesn't, it should just be a matter of one extra top-up, rather than the situation I've had in previous winters where I'm constantly afraid of running out.

I'm also hoping that if it does get cold again we don't get the monumental snow we had last year. I've always been a fan of snow, and fundamentally 'snow days' off of work aren't bad things, but the way the country's transport infrastructure properly collapsed last year was pretty scary.

It wasn't much fun struggling into work with the roads in the state they were.