ABSTRACT
It had been a warm damp winter in Brittany and most of West ern Europe to the delight of householders and the despair of fuel dealers. Supertankers idled on the high seas if they were lucky; the others were laid up and their crews laid off. Snow was sparse even in the north. Elsewhere, when it did arrive, it came so late that it was wiped away by early spring and flushed into the sodden earth. Winter was more a matter of staying dry than keeping warm. Doors swelled and stuck, the washing dripped from Monday to Sunday, and the rain kept coming. If the whole North Sea had been diverted onto our heads, the result would not have been dissimilar. My own feelings were mixed. Personally, I was only too glad to brave the worst of January and February with a bit of chestnut kindling and a few splinters of oak; professionally, I found it hard at times to keep a proper focus on BTUs when wool socks met most of my own needs. Solar heating had taken the sting out of the winter of 1974-755 if nature could do it, why couldn’t we?
