HEXTOL COLUMN: Oil price surge brings back memories of 1973

Petrol and diesel prices have not shot up in such a spectacular manner since the OPEC crisis of 1973, which I am old enough to remember with distaste.

To punish those countries which had supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War, Arab members of the Organisation of Oil Producing and Exporting Countries introduced an oil embargo against them and slashed production, causing worldwide shortages and more than quadrupling the price of oil in a few short months.

There were huge queues at filling stations and, tucked away in her box of mementoes, Mrs Hextol has a petrol ration book issued by the government in 1974 in readiness for the rationing of fuel.

Things eventually blew over, but the price of fuel remained staggeringly high, so much so that one day, when filling up her ancient Mini at Fewsters Garage in Hexham, Mrs Hextol noted that filling the tank cost almost as much as she had paid to buy the car.

But the cost of motor fuel is piffling when compared to the gargantuan lift in the price of heating oil.

When we filled our tank through a local supplier just before Christmas, it was 61p per litre - it is now somewhere in the region of £1.24 per litre and much higher in some quarters.

It is a nightmare for those of us living in the sticks, where there is no mains gas to heat our homes and cook our food.

While the relatively mild winter means Hextol Towers is still fairly well oiled up at the moment, potential future shortages have prompted suggestions from Mrs Hextol that we revert to having an open fire, with radiators heated by a back boiler.

Now, no one appreciates a roaring fire more than me, whether as the best way to warm a room, boil water in a power cut, or simply as a capital way of disposing of confidential documents.

But as chief stick chopper, ace fire-lighter and grubby chief stoker, I had to remind Mrs Hextol that relighting that fire may not be a simple matter.

We switched from coal to oil about a quarter of a century ago, in a painful and expensive process which resulted in a plastic cap being jammed on the top of the chimney to prevent jackdaws and starlings taking up residence there.

A hole was also drilled into the back boiler to prevent the sort of catastrophic steam build-up explosions that have happened in Bellingham in the past.

I pointed out that while we still have the grate, poker and other fireside accoutrements in the garage, they have not aged well, and last time I came across them, they were all red with rust.

I also reminded her that the hundredweight bags of coal we used to have delivered for about £3 each in the 1990s are now banned as the work of the devil, and their replacement cobbles of smokeless fuel can be ten times more for a lesser amount.

These facts were dismissed as a mere bagatelle by Mrs Hextol, whom I think is considering forcing me up the chimney to remove the chimney cap and associated nests as she knows I won’t go on the roof under any circumstances.

She has clearly forgotten the trials and tribulations of having an open fire, starting with the number of times she has had to bandage my fingers due to my mad axe man antics while chopping sticks.

She has though been accumulating bits of creosoted timber for some while, doubtless as potential firelighters.

I reminded her of the morning cleaning out of the ashes, some of which are still hot from the night before, and melt the bin if not cooled first.

No matter how carefully I carried them out, I always seemed to leave a little trail of cinders across the floor.

Then there’s the actual process of lighting the fire, which used to involve holding an old broadsheet Courant over the fire to make it draw, which often resulted in the paper bursting into flames, and having to be stuffed up the chimney, often creating a chimney fire of startling vigour, with a flame up to seven feet long.

And what about the stoking of the fire, going out to the bunker for a shovel of coal on a cold and windy night, and trailing coal dust throughout the house?

And who could forget the time we had just taken the fireguard down, when a cinder jumped out of the embers and set fire to the cat?