A LADY AT LEISURE
‘My old fur hat comes to the rescue on really frosty mornings, and the dogs are happy to provide bodily warmth’
A lady at leisure T
WORDS FIONA ARMSTRONG ILLUSTRATION BOB DEWAR
he chief returns from a shooting trip, much buoyed. The host was charming, and to everyone’s delight, the hostess
appeared at breakfast clad in a negligee and silky dressing gown. I think it’s called keeping up troop morale, but in this abode it will be a cold day in hell before I make my debut thus dressed at this time of year. Unlike the glorious country we inhabit, the
MacGregor household is not oil-rich. The black gold rarely arrives and when it does it comes in dribs and drabs, and is rationed from the ancient tank, depending on how flush we are. The heating went on in mid-November
and will go off at the end of March. I’m not compl a ining . I understand rising energy costs. This is a largish p l a c e , a n d until I
met and married my chief, I used to fund all horrible heating bills myself. In those days I was literally the power
police: checking who was using what and why. Now he’s the one who
goes round manically switching off lights in rooms with no one in them, and hissing at people who don’t shut doors properly. He’s even got a machine that tells you how much electricity is being used at any one time. When the hair dryer and the spin dryer are on together, it must drive him
demented. I know it used to make me see red when I got the quarterly bad news statement. It’s the old story – when you’re not the one who foots the bill it’s easy to leave the heater on. But as you get older you do feel the cold, and
my winter world at home seems increasingly restricted to the kitchen where the good old Aga always guarantees a warm welcome. I love this house, with all its character and history, but with ancient stone walls five foot thick, wonky doors and a lack of insulation, I sometimes long for a modern bungalow; somewhere small with underfloor heating and windows that don’t rattle with the wind. Of course, it’s always possible to escape:
driving out in the car, turning up the heating to full blast, finding a nice warm shopping arcade in which to further unthaw; or perhaps there might be a trip to see my mother-in-law at the Blairgowrie nursing home. I have never been in such a draught-free, cosy place and can fully recommend it. If you want to be warm in winter, with tea and biscuits on tap, adopt a granny and visit her regularly. The MacGregor is working on solving the
problem. We have an open fire in the sitting room and happily there’s a log burner being installed in the hall, with a flue that looks like being half a mile long – it’s an expensive and not-yet-quite-decided work in progress. As I write, the chief is chopping and splitting
logs, and stacking the wood shed: all that axe swinging and grunting must be very therapeutic after a day in the office. In the meantime, my old fur hat comes to the rescue on really frosty mornings, and the dogs are happy to provide shared bodily warmth in an emergency. Quite simply, we put on extra jerseys and just get on with it. So if you come to stay, please do not expect
to find me in anything other than something warm and woolly as I serve your bacon and eggs at the start of the day. Should you happen to arrive one day in summer, however, it could be a very different story…
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Keeping warm in the depths of winter in a draughty stately home takes a good deal of ingenuity – along with grit, determination and plenty of extra jumpers
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