Rosemary Goring: A heat pump will cost me £22,000 to install

There’s no denying that most of us are more interested in discussing the weather than the state of the economy. Storm clouds or a brisk breeze get us exercised in a way geopolitics rarely can. Around where I live, though, the hottest topic of conversation is not the wind or snow but the temperature indoors: how warm, or otherwise, our houses are.

I doubt there’s anyone in our village who thoughtlessly switches on the central heating, or turns on the hot tap for longer than needed. Baths are rationed, drawers are stuffed with jumpers and socks that Roald Amundsen would have envied, and visitors arrive in layers, rightly prepared for the worst. A friend dropped by the other evening, but did not remove her padded winter coat until she saw we had lit the fire. Another kept on her woolly hat throughout an afternoon, even though the fire was blazing.

Those of us thirled to oil measure it out as if it were cough mixture. It's a country thing, I now realise. Living without a gas supply means most of us rely on oil; a handful are heated by stored gas, even fewer are entirely electric, and a tiny number – we’re talking single figures – have installed heat pumps in their modern or modernised homes.

Even though we are miserly, some of us lie awake wondering if there’s enough oil to tide us over until the next delivery, and hoping there won’t be unexpected guests, which means turning the central heating on as if it were a regular occurrence.

Those of us thirled to oil measure it out as if it were cough mixture (Image: free)

All this makes us sound unbearably tight-fisted, and maybe we are. Have you seen........

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