The seventies called. No reason, they just wanted a chat.

[hirez]

While I think about it, the smell of warm rubber (eg a freshly filled hot water bottle) will always take me back to the early seventies, Holt Farm and the time before central heating. Or at least the time that central heating was looked upon as this dreadful modern invention that rubbish city dwellers had in their crap little houses.

Comments

[kissmeforlonger.livejournal.com]

Ha! Yes.

[bogwitch64.livejournal.com]

The scent of a freshly filled hot water bottle always brings one thing to mind for me too. CRAMPS!

[bmlg.livejournal.com]

Ha, me too! The nostalgia smell for me is hot paper bags - Chinese takeaway.
We visited relatives in England before central heating. I remember gathering around the teapot in the morning. And noticing the many many chimneys on the rooftop silhouettes.
-Barbara

[bogwitch64.livejournal.com]

Hot paper bags to me means chestnuts on the street of NYC. I hate chestnuts, but I looooove that smell.

[sheepthief.livejournal.com]

And the thought of hot water bottles always brings to mind the gurgle and splutter as I tried to fill them too quickly and ended up scalding myself. Soon it will be time to get them out again though - it's getting cold up here.

[perlmonger.livejournal.com]

Ahh... My mum used to use gin half bottles, the fat flat green chaps, as hotties. Bloody hot they were too, without any insulating layer.

She wasn't a drinker either, and neither was my dad (bar the odd bottle of wine); ghods alone know where they came from…

[sheepthief.livejournal.com]

Not a bad idea at all. And you could always slip it into a sock to take the immediate heat off. Or, drink the previous contents and warm oneself up that way.

[sarah-mum.livejournal.com]

Mmmm...scraping ice of the inside of your bedroom windows.

I have central heating now - the wood burner is in the centre of the kitchen, and the fireplace is in the centre of the living room.

[eljaydaly.livejournal.com]

The idea of no central heating scares the crap out of me. How do people not DIE?

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

Pullovers. And multiple duvets.

Plus, after a while your metabolism adjusts to it, and the cold just doesn't matter so much.

[quercus.livejournal.com]

We live in England, you live in Pennsylvania.

Lack of winter heating here is unpleasant, but rarely fatal.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Sleeping with the window open from an early age, brisk country walks, chopping your own wood for the fire and living in places where it rarely goes below -5C.

[eljaydaly.livejournal.com]

That actually sounds... romantic. =D

[girfan.livejournal.com]

You get used to it. We had a place with only a wood burning fireplace in the living room and space heaters (the first place I lived in with J). One wears sweaters, warm socks, gets a thick duvet or an electric blanket and gets used to it being cold when running to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

We rarely heat the house after midnight until 7am in the winter, and I really hate overheated rooms now and will open windows in hotels if I'm too hot.

Of course, we rarely have snow and never have the arctic-blast Chicago winters to deal with.