tanked up

I woke briefly at seven this morning, decided I did not need to get up yet, went back to sleep, briefly regained just enough consciousness to register that it was twenty past, and was suddenly properly awake at eight because I thought I heard someone knocking on the door.  I wasn't sure about that, partly because I'd been asleep, but also because the cats are capable of making so much noise that any extraneous bangs and crashes can easily be them.  I find it comforting when the Systems Administrator is away, being able to attribute any odd noises around the house to the cats.

Nonetheless, I was expecting a call at some point in the near future, because the oil was due to be delivered by January 28th.  I began to fret about the level in the tank when the electronic gauge in the kitchen got down to two bars on the display.  The SA assured me that even when it got down to only one bar there was plenty left, and that if we ordered oil on the back of two bars there would not be enough room in the tank for the quantity needed to qualify for a volume discount.  Then it got down to one bar, and I reminded the SA again.  I did not nag, you understand, just issued the odd reminder in a friendly, non-judgemental voice.  About a week ago the SA announced that the oil was on its way, and over the weekend while the SA was in Cheltenham the display in the kitchen began to flash a warning that we were now officially low on oil.

I scurried downstairs in my dressing gown, a voluminous, vaguely north African style cotton robe in an interesting shade somewhere between orange and turmeric.  I bought it because it was so beautiful, to see it was to desire it, but in truth I almost never need to wear a dressing gown, and it has spent most of the past decade hanging on the back of the bathroom door, where I can admire it while sitting on the loo.  Nobody got to see it this morning, however, because when I got to the door there was nobody there.  There was a sound of a heavy vehicle reversing, but the curve of the drive meant I couldn't see what it was.  Scurrying down to the point where I could look round the corner, I saw there was indeed an oil lorry, but it was reversing away from the house.  I rushed back inside and told the Systems Administrator that the oil had come, but was going away again.  The SA began to wear the expression of somebody who until very recently had been trying to stay asleep, while hoping that whatever it was that was going on could happen without them.

I got dressed.  It was really too cold and too undignified to pursue the oil wearing nothing but knickers and a mauve camisole topped off with a turmeric robe that looked as though I might have borrowed it from Derek Jarman.  When I went back downstairs, the oil lorry was having another go, this time reversing up the lane.  He made it almost to the house, before trundling off forwards again.  I had another spasm of anxiety that the oil was about to vanish at the eleventh hour, like a parcel being taken to the sorting office because there was nobody there to sign for it, but it turned out that the driver had decided that the eleagnus hedge made life too difficult, and that he was going to go the other way round the turning circle.  There he stopped, and began to unreel his hose.

I apologised about the hedge, but he was extremely good natured about it, and we have our oil. Two thousand litres.  I'm sure that originally the SA was aiming to fit at least sixteen hundred in the tank, and then the target crept up to eighteen hundred, but by running it to the wire we've squeezed in a full two thousand, saving an extra nought point something of a penny per litre.  It's a good game as long as you don't miscalculate, and end up with an airlock or sludge out of the very bottom of the tank in your boiler.  The SA, who had appeared by this point fully dressed, announced that he was going back to bed.

Addendum  I was amused to hear on The World at One that Labour's proposed fifty per cent top tax band would only be a temporary measure.  Of course, so is income tax itself, and it will be rescinded just as soon as those pesky Napoleonic Wars are out of the way.