yule coal squeal

There is a fancy word for that - words with the same final sound used together. Please tell me if you know it. I like a bit of fancy technical vocabulary, though best with sentences, financially ominous if it comes from the mechanic.



Anyway, the winter solstice. Yule, according to my Southern Hemisphere Pagan Calendar.



Here at the messiest house in Wetville, we are for the most part thoroughly, dredgedly institutionalised and much more likely to celebrate when work takes a break in two weeks' time.



But I have been thinking a little about pre-industrial winter solstice. I figure the two key things people must have worried about are food supplies and heating. Which is rather similar to right now when I check the bank balance and plan for food provision and try and work out firewood provision to last us until fireless warmth (very late down here, we have had the fire on in December before).



We haven't bought enough wood (a fortnight of sick people requiring all day fires burns a big pile) for the entire winter and the last load of dry wood has not all been stacked so now it is not dry at all but rather sodden and FH is always either sick or working weekends or it is raining too hard for wood stacking. So today I ordered more coal and carefully negotiated the prder size so there would still be food money left for the week and hope that we can stack the wood soon and it will be nice and dry in a few months' time when we have burnt all the coal.

Coal is naughty. Environmentally extremely bad to burn it. So naughty that from next Thursday the $80 per scoop I paid today will become $110 per scoop because of carbon taxation.

So there you go. I am so naughty that I prefer to burn coal than to be cold. It's pretty dirty stuff and every other year Fionn's excema has flared when we have resorted to coal. But cold houses aren't much good for his asthma.

It's still our goal to be coal-free and also to collect and stack wood a year in advance. I think we will get there. But for the moment I am appreciating the warmth (though looks like it's my turn to go out in the rain and refill the coal buckets after this blogpost).

What else did I appreciate today? The sun shone a little while I was home and nobody was getting stuck-on-purpose and I weeded some of my garden for a few minutes. Those few minutes were so precious. To be a gardener in the now, not just in the history.

Hope you all had a great time somehow and that the lengthening days bring pleasure. Time for some mulled wine I think.

Comments

Christy said…
mulled wine definitely. about to start planning our annual mid winter christmas party which always brings some cold(ish) weather cheer around here. don't worry about the firewood - I even had an offer of free firewood this year and didn't get myself organised enough to go and actually get it. we chopped down some trees of our own once, that was fabulous and made me feel virtuous about providing our own, except I haven't planted any replacements...
Anonymous said…
Puts on Teacher's Hat

consonance is the word you're looking for....it's a repeating of consonant sounds...if it occurs word initially, then it's called alliteration (but you already knew that)
assonance is the vowel equivalent (you knew that too, hey?)

Rachael

Popular posts from this blog

McCalls 7288 & altered Style Arc Barb pants

Livingstone daisies

Heartburn & Paris Etc