Home is where ....

Lucy’s column for November 25
Homelo..1
They say that home is where the heart is. Or, it has been said, the hearth. And in my very early days, that usually meant a black-leaded grate, with a side oven which permanently housed a simmering stew pot, and a shelf-like contraption on a bracket which swung back and forth over the fire on which sat a blackened, but non-stop bubbling, kettle.
After years of fiddling with flues, dampers, spitting kettles and boiled-dry casseroles, how my mother glowed with pride, and sighed with relief, when the great lump of heavy metal, which took her most of Friday to clean within an inch of its life, was yanked out, and replaced with thoroughly modern tiled fireplace. She still had to deal with the ashes, the coal bucket, paper sticks, kindling, and the twice-yearly mess known as the visit of the chimney sweep. So that, on the eventual installation of a flick-of-a-switch gas fire, she must have thought all her birthdays had come at once.
Fast forward a generation or two, and what have we got in its place? In our case, central heating, with a pretend coal-fuelled stove in one room, which glows like the real thing if we can be bothered to plug it in, and in another, a rather smart dog grate, complete with real logs, but with a red-glow bulb where the flickering flames should be. It could have been different. We could have opted for pebbles and posh candles.
But there are house-hunters who still crave those old-fashioned forms of heating the house – though they insist on the back-up of radiators, just to be on the safe, snug and warm side. I’ve watched them swoon at the sight of an ancient range, sigh over an ingle-nook, go potty at the idea of a belching pot-bellied stove. And how do I know? Well, I’m a closet day-time telly-viewer who occasionally catches a glimpse of these "to buy or not to buy a house in the country/in the sun" shows which crop up with alarming regularity.
Fireplaces apart, the wish-list of some of these home-seekers never ceases to amaze.
It’s hard not to hark back to dolly-tubs and wooden mangles in the back yard when they’re presented with fully-fitted, shiny utility rooms bigger and better than the average kitchen, and the tin bath hanging on the kitchen door when they’re viewing family bathrooms, wet rooms, shower rooms, and the ubiquitous en-suites, sometimes all in the same building. Other home-comfort must-haves appear to be a study, children’s room, summer room, TV room, snug, loft living space, and a kitchen vast enough to incorporate a banquet-size table, three-piece, family games computer, and 52-inch flat screen TV just in case there isn’t somewhere to house the home cinema.
In one recent airing, the would-be purchaser also demanded a room for the dogs. It’s not that long since it was the norm for kids to not only share a bedroom, but sleep three or four to a bed. The dog often had its own space, admittedly. It was known as a kennel.
I’ve not even touched on the basement, with its rumpus and games rooms, wine cellar, or the triple garage with electronic up-and-over doors. In the majority of the programmes, these are families with fewer than 2.4 children, and often couples looking to "downsize". Is it all a bid to keep up with the Jones’s? Or simply, like me, a deep-seated phobia of coal buckets and fire-lighters?

Ginlo..1
I’ll raise a glass to my favourite tipple, the gin and tonic, which last week celebrated 150 years as the world’s first cocktail. It’s long been a nightly treat as I cook the dinner. And I assuage any guilt by considering its juniper berries and lemon slice as two of those five-a-day fruit portions the health police are always banging on about.
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