h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Let's try this again shall we? Since Photobucket seem to have done something to their hotlinking, meaning a link to a .jpg... oh I can't be bothered to explain. Life's too short.

Any road up.

The Hoops you have to jump through...

To stay warm when you live in a place built in a region that gets hot far more than it gets cold, and which was built at a time when energy was cheap and the idea of energy conservation was either not yet dreamt of, or was so fringe that it was derided as the domain of damn hippy treehuggers.

http://i.imgur.com/lnZJtzQ.jpg

In case you can't work out what's going on there, it's a thick blanket, tucked into the gap between the blind mechanism and the bedroom window frame at the top, pinned to the wall down the sides, and with little stacks of CDs resting on the windowsill at the bottom, so the thing is pretty much sealed all round.

I also have a nail sticking out of the wall at each of the four corners of the front door frame with a fitted sheet stretched over them, to stop the drafts that come in around the door, and a blanket covering the patio door and window that leads out onto the balcony, similarly pinned to the wall at the sides and with various items of clothing up against it on the floor to prevent the cold air from escaping out of the bottom. Like a sausage dog draft preventer that many of us remember from our childhood.

It's a bit of a pain having to unpin and roll up the blanket covering the patio door, but it all worked well last night when I was watching A Bit of a Do, and then overnight when the temperature here went down to 29F/-1.7C (I always switch the heater off when I go to bed).

The forecast for Wednesday night is 24F/-4.4C (and low- to mid-30s for the coming seven nights), so I won't be taking any of these measures down this week. It's a simple matter to unhook the fitted sheet from the nails around the front door if I have to go out, and the blanket over the patio door is rolled up and sitting on top of the rail the blinds hang from, but the one in the bedroom can stay pinned for the duration.

Addendum.
I don't think it was built at a time before energy conservation was dreamt of because I recall a Granada TV programme in the early/mid 70s called A House for the Future, which I might have already mentioned in these pages, presented by Brian Trueman - he of DangerMouse and other Cosgrove Hall productions. I know this apartment complex was built around the turn of the 80s, give or take a few years.