Mrs H and I wandered into a bric-a-brac shop this morning where we immediately noticed a very familiar aroma - paraffin. A small paraffin lamp was burning not far from the shop entrance, giving off that unmistakable odour. It took us back more than four decades to our flat in Coventry where we used a paraffin heater to keep winter at bay.
9 comments:
Four decades ago was very late for paraffin heaters. I can remember one we had at home when I was a child in the early 60s. I think it was the one on this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0Z4hISHFxM
(I love the mood music - and the irony of changing the wick in front of a modern central heating radiator!) One thing puzzles me, though. The one we had was fitted with a safety device which I remember as a heavy weighted ring suspended around the wick, so that if the heated was knocked over, it would snuff out the flame before the leaking paraffin could catch fire. I remember being very impressed with that as a child, but couldn't see it on this one...
We had two of these for years!
Once, the bathroom one burned through to the wick, and the whole room was instantly blackened, with little ash flakes falling everywhere!
The scent of parrafin will always be with us though, and I always thought that it was a bit silly having to keep a window open to let the fumes out, and of course, all of the heat!
Something for Roger Harrabin to ponder no doubt...
Maybe the shop owners are aware of the UK's looming electricity shortage, and are testing their precautions?
"Four decades ago was very late for paraffin heaters. I can remember one we had at home when I was a child in the early 60s"
So can I - it was the same model featured in the following link, and I can remember changing the wick many times.
http://www.spanglefish.com/avicennassolution/index.asp?pageid=547337
Cough, cough, cough, I don't care if it does cost more we are having an electric fire.
A K Haart,
Remember those heaters like it was yesterday. First step towards getting 'soft'...
We look back at what was normal and cannot believe what we see as we are so cosseted now, no heating in the bedroom, ice in the winter on the inside of the window, extra blankets until they became heavy and a (if you were lucky) hot water bottle that soon went cold.
But as everyone was the same it was not even discussed.
You bought it?
Sam - it was slightly more than four decades, in use until about the mid seventies, bought new round about 1973. We still have a Valor heater very similar to the one in your video but it has been converted to electricity, not as a heater but to give a flickering light effect.
Scrobs - it was a while before I managed to adjust the wick correctly and keep it that way. Apart from that they did work quite well and as you say, Roger Harrabin might ponder on them.
Dave - that one still looks quite modern. It would be interesting to see young children trying to work out what it was for.
Demetrius - we had an electric fire too, but it was even more dodgy than the paraffin heater.
Mac - it probably was the first step towards getting soft because in the fifties we didn't even have that.
Wiggia - yes I think we were just used to it and that was that. Even now as the weather becomes colder we find ourselves complaining at first but we soon get used to it.
James - no we already have one. After trying it out once we no longer light it - too safety conscious I suppose.
"That one still looks quite modern"
That depends on what you consider to be "modern"! My memories relate to the mid/late 1960's, but it may have remained on sale for some years afterwards? During that same period we moved into our first house with "Central Heating" - a floor standing coke fired boiler in the kitchen, with a simple on/off electric circulating pump and radiators in each room. The hot water cylinder was not on the pumped circuit, and so relied on natural convection for its circulation.
Somebody had to get up each morning and start the fire with a gas poker. Occasionally, we would go back to bed and forget that the damper was wide open - a banging sound and near-boiling water gushing from the overflow outside was the abrupt reminder! And, of course, it needed regular feeding (the coke was delivered off the back of a lorry in 1cwt sacks) and the ash had to be raked out and disposed of in the bin. There was none of this technicolour "Wheely Bin" nonsense - houses had a single galvanised steel bin, collected weekly. The bin man came round the side of the house and had to lift it onto his shoulders to carry it out to the truck...
This all fits nicely with Wiggia'a comment above!
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