After a hard day on the farm, Mark Williams jumped off the tractor to
write:

>
>I am not surprised. Agas tend to be in bigger houses. Ours runs for about
>4 months a year and heats most of the house for that time (with a small
>boost from the oil fired boiler). It is off for the rest of the year and we
>use an electric cooker. In theory it should be able to run on the renewable
>oils that are being tried out by airlines to replace jet fuel, so we can be
>totally green and use the renewable jet fuel that won't get used if the 3rd
>runway is not built.

My Aga was in a typical country cottage (all oak beams and
inglenooks), so definitely not a bigger house. Everyone else in the
village who had Agas hardly lived in grand houses.

I really can't understand why you would have an Aga and not use it. It
provides lashing of hot water and all your cooking (slow and fast). I
had a whistling kettle, so no need for an electric kettle. The only
times I let it go out were when it was being serviced and if I was
away for more than a week (less than a week and my neighbour who fed
the cat for me also fed the Aga).

Why would you spend all that money on the Rolls Royce of cookers, then
drive around in a Skoda for most of the year? (Apologies to Skoda
owners - I am sure they are perfectly good cars - I picked it at
random to stand up against a Rolls Royce.)

On Fri, 16 Jan 2009 08:37:58 +0000, Colin Blackburn <news> wrote:

>J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
>
>I don't know, only one bloke broke his legs when the plane landed on the
>Hudson. Surely a price worth paying for short runways or landing on the
>Thames.
>
Wasn't that amazing? How long before the movie?

On Fri, 16 Jan 2009 08:23:53 +0000, Colin Blackburn
<news> wrote:

>Jenny M Benson wrote:
>
>I don't think I'd classify a Rayburn as a working class version of an
>Aga. I always saw aga as upper class with Rayburn slightly lower. They
>are still pretty expensive and I don't remember people on the estate
>where I was dragged up having Rayburns installed on a regular basis.
>
>Colin
I thought we were middle class, college tutor and M Navy officer, but
we were unable to afford either an Aga or a Rayburn.

badriya wrote:
> On Fri, 16 Jan 2009 08:23:53 +0000, Colin Blackburn
> <news> wrote:
>
> I thought we were middle class, college tutor and M Navy officer, but
> we were unable to afford either an Aga or a Rayburn.
>
I didn't know middle-class necessarily equated well-enough-off to afford
an Aga?

badriya wrote:
> On Fri, 16 Jan 2009 08:23:53 +0000, Colin Blackburn
> <news> wrote:
>
> I thought we were middle class, college tutor and M Navy officer, but
> we were unable to afford either an Aga or a Rayburn.

Now that I have escaped my working class shackles and am a member of the
middle classes I do have a Rayburn. However, it came with the house. I
don't think I could afford or choose to install one.

Colin

"Mark Williams" <spam.me> writes:
>More here:
>[..]
>
>If this works, then oil (& wood) fired Agas will be one of the least
>CO2-productive forms of domestic heating (when the whole carbon cycle is
>taken into account).

and starvation in the majority world will increase still further.

remember, to make biofuels, you take land out of food production; this
has already happened in a big way in the u.s., so that the one-time
"food surplus" that was regularly used for famine relief, is fast
disappearing.

(note that the asa has recently upheld a complaint about adverts for
"green" biofuels.)

in fact, there is no such thing as a free lunch, in all these
discussions of how to deal with the mess we've made of the world.
(wide use of biofuels would go some way to ensuring that there's no
lunch at all for frighteningly many people.)

Colin Blackburn <news> writes:
>Now that I have escaped my working class shackles and am a member of the
>middle classes I do have a Rayburn. However, it came with the house. I
>don't think I could afford or choose to install one.

my daughter and her intended (both of whom earn quite a lot more than
me -- for working a lot harder, i reckon), drooled over a house that
they might have bought because among other things it had an aga
installed. "we'd never get one otherwise, dad", she said.

in the end they decided not to go for that one ... and then the
economy went "pop", and while their savings aren't attracting as much
interest as they once did, the prices of houses are falling faster
still.

Plusnet wrote:
[..]

Marjorie wrote:
> Plusnet wrote:
>> In article <p5fvm4587jk2aufn28bmh8rd1lp9qv2kqg>,
>> stephenbowden says...
>>
>> I have some sympathy with what you say Stephen, but I bet I'm not the
>> onlyrat who had to read the first part several times
>>
>> "We had an Aga installed in the 17th Century...."
>>
> YANAOU

Well, they are built to last. I guess Stephen must be too.

Colin

Al Menzies <al> wrote:
> Why would you spend all that money on the Rolls Royce of cookers, then
> drive around in a Skoda for most of the year?

To reduce fuel consumption? Seems a very obvious answer to me.

Sebastian

On Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:11:16 +0000, Colin Blackburn
<news> wrote:

>Chris J Dixon wrote:
>
>Damn! I counted them out and I counted them back in again.....

But so much in the spirit of Brian Hanrahan's original sense of the
expression, don't you think?


>No wonder I
>only just scraped through my number theory last year.




>> Perhaps we need to introduce a delimiter character to indicate
>> "umbrella" should be read literally?

I thought the multi-function irony smiley character was always
deployed when "umbrella" should _not_ be read literally. No need to
flag up literal use then, surely?

Nick O

badriya <badriya> wrote:
> I thought we were middle class, college tutor and M Navy officer, but
> we were unable to afford either an Aga or a Rayburn.

I must probably take back what I said earlier: that my initial sympathy
for the Aga showed my class background ... But I don't know. Before I
was born, my father bought a grand piano. He is a pianist and (now
retired, obviously) university music teacher. Its cost was comparable
to that of a car, and we didn't have a car until I was a few years old.
Maybe with another set of priorities, middle class families might
afford an Aga? I have no idea what they cost of course.

Sebastian

On Jan 16, 1:13 pm, Nick Odell
<gurzhfvp.jbexf...@ntlworld.com.invalid> wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:11:16 +0000, Colin Blackburn
>>
>> <n> wrote:
>>
>> But so much in the spirit of Brian Hanrahan's original sense of the
> expression, don't you think?
>> I thought the multi-function irony smiley character was always
> deployed when "umbrella" should _not_ be read literally. No need to
> flag up literal use then, surely?

Surely the non-literal umbrella is much more commonplace hereabouts
than the literal variety?

I know I umbrellaed my umbrella either in the umbrella or in the
umbrella, but I'm umbrellaed if I can remember which.

(And I do mean umbrella (except where I don't.))

Jo Lonergan wrote:
> On Fri, 16 Jan 2009 08:37:58 +0000, Colin Blackburn <news> wrote:
>
> Wasn't that amazing? How long before the movie?
>
It's fantastic - husbad calls these "scarebuses", but not any longer :-))

Since it's good news, I reckon this isn't Bad Taste, though I'm sure
the gecko will let me know otherwise :-)

http://snipurl.com/hudsonplane [www_thedailymash_co_uk]

On Fri, 16 Jan 2009 11:36:51 +0100, badriya <badriya> wrote:

>On Fri, 16 Jan 2009 08:23:53 +0000, Colin Blackburn
><news> wrote:
>
>I thought we were middle class, college tutor and M Navy officer, but
>we were unable to afford either an Aga or a Rayburn.

College Tutor B; Navy Captain A according to the usual social
_groupings_ which go ABC1C2DE but I maintain that one is on dangerous
ground if one tries to equate that to social _class_. If a teacher is
middle class, what happens to their class if they decide to leave
teaching and work as a road sweeper? What about members of the Royal
Family who work in publishing, theatre or crafts? Or the working class
private soldier who eventually becomes a brigadier?

And anyone who lives on nothing but the state pension is automatically
classed "E" and in my opinion the whole range of British social
classes can be found there.

Nick O