Opinion : Are you ready for winter?

It won’t be long before the world is full of icicles with ice and possibly snow appearing on the ground in the winter mornings.

No doubt there will be those who never saw the colder weather coming however my good self has been planning for winter for weeks.

It always amazes me how many people fail to service their gas boilers every year. Yours truly knows of one friend who gets their boiler serviced in the spring. Surely the best time to get your boiler serviced in in the Autumn so it’s working at optimum performance ready for the winter?

How many of those who, like my good self, have coal fires take the time to sweep their chimneys every year? No doubt when the winter weather arrives the news section of this website will be full of articles about the fire brigade turning out to extinguish chimney fires due to the chimney not being swept.

Of course cars need to be prepared for the winter weather too. How many people actually bother to check that the anti-freeze in their car is at the correct strength or if their car tyres are at the correct pressure?

I see from the news section of this website that once again ‘Winter driving workshops [are] on offer to Buckinghamshire residents‘. This is surely a good thing as the last thing one wants is break down on a cold winters day.

Suppose you were to have a burst water pipe in your house. Do you know where the main stopcock is?

More importantly when was the stopcock last turned? After all the last thing you want is to have a burst and end up being unable to turn the water off. It’s not nice seeing your house flood and being unable to turn off the water as one of my friends found out recently.

So many people seem to just sleep walk into winter and come a cropper on the first icy morning.

As for my good self, well your humble servant is fully prepared. Chimney swept, trusty motor prepared and all ready for what ever the weather has to throw at me.

I’ve even got my turkey in ready for Christmas. It was bought last year in the after-Christmas sales and has been sitting patiently in my large freezer ever since.

There are those who are prepared and those who will be caught out, yours truly prefers to be the former rather than the latter.

What do you think?

My blogs are published every Tuesday and Friday evening around 8.00pm here on the WycombeToday.com website.

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