Romancing the stove

Getting my name wrong is only the beginning

Why do people have so much trouble with my name? It's Holkham. H-O-L-K-H-A-M. If I give it over the phone, I always spell it, and they invariably get it wrong. I can understand private clubs and associations making mistakes, but it's companies that puzzle me, seeming to insist I must come from Germany (Holkmann), Bangladesh (Holkhan), Finland (Hokkam) or, Heaven forbid, Devon (Holcombe). If this is a foretaste of how I will fare in the EU, I'm not at all happy about our membership.

People are fallible, of course, but I thought computers were supposed to be accurate, so why, when my name gets passed from one mailing list to another, does it change again to Holkam, Holkin, Hallcomb or, most recently, Halkham? Even the Plain English Campaign have me down as Holkholm, despite receiving a free copy of my book about product information and labelling with my name in big letters on the cover.

Junk mail is everyone's bugbear, and I put up with it like everyone else, but it does annoy me to get letters addressed to Holkham Tony, because that's how I'm listed in the business phone book (except for the small matter of a comma: Holkham, Tony). It doesn't just annoy me, it mystifies me that they expect me to buy something when they can't even be bothered to get my name right.

The problem stems, I think, from sight being our primary conscious sense. What you see sometimes gives you a completely false impression. Take emissions. We have a wood- and coal-burning cooker-boiler, which we call 'the stove', to distinguish it from the little electric cooker and gas boiler we use in summer when it's too hot to have the stove alight, and the microwave cooker. The stove has been the best £250 we ever spent. It needs very little attention, and will burn anything from green wood to smokeless coal, and even dead mice and chicken bones if pushed.

What surprises us is that it comes in for criticism from time to time on account of the emissions it produces. Criticism stings, so last winter I sat down and roughly worked out that the use of our stove actually results in at least 25% less emissions than if we used gas and electricity alone. It makes sense, when you think about it. Gas and electricity have to be manufactured, and result in considerable emissions before they even get into our homes, whereas the fuel burned on the stove has either come from dead trees or from coal which has had only a minimum of industrial processing.

Further, as the fire burns most fuels virtually completely, and gives off a not unpleasant smell (whereas the exhaust from the gas boiler is revolting and toxic), I consider we're doing the neighbourhood, and the global community, a favour. Except it does tend to smoke from time to time, especially when there's no wind. It's not the smoke that causes the problem, in my view, it's people's perception of what that smoke means. One puff of it and some people are out in their gardens trying to find where it has come from. I thought a newcomer's bonfire a couple of years ago was going to herald the return of the lynch mob, such a fuss was made. One winter when I was burning an unusual amount of wood, a near neighbour even accused me of trying to kill him, though none of our other neighbours feels quite as strongly as that. I notice the majority of people don't behave in the same way when a car alarm goes off - they probably don't even hear it - so why this anxiety about smoke from a fire?

I notice people don't complain, either, while hundreds of cars sit with their engines running at the level crossing near us every day which, when calculated on a national scale, equates to a billion pounds worth of wasted fuel every year (not to mention the effects of the resultant pollution on the health of the population) alone. But try lighting up a cigarette, the whole of which is going to produce about the same emissions as a car idling for about half of one second, and you will be glared at, sneered at, pitied or berated by those very same people who are sitting idling their engines for minutes at a time. I'll tell you, in five minutes in the summer when the railway crossing gates are down, Chichester makes Athens look like the Swiss mountains.

If people are complaining about the wrong emissions, then, how do we get them to complain about the ones that matter?

The key is visibility. The smoke from my stove (and the cigarette) is visible. If it weren't, as when I'm only burning smokeless coal, or having a fag in a force 9 gale (not easy, but needs must), no one would notice. Using that logic, something should be added to the fuel of petrol and diesel engines to show the emissions. Making all emissions visible would mean complaints were proportional to the problem, people would stop complaining about my stove, and wise investors would put their money into bicycles. A couple of years ago, I would have said investing in electric vehicles was wise, but are they, in view of the emissions resulting from the manufacture of electricity (not to mention the vehicles themselves), actually any 'greener'? Probably not.

So what would we put into fuel to make emissions visible? Water, maybe, but it would vaporise too quickly. Vegetable oil, possibly. Perhaps scientists researching into making emissions less visible could concentrate on this reverse problem. They would be doing us all a big favour. Readers may have some additional suggestions.

But what has this to do with my name? I'll tell you. When I rang a local dealer for some spare parts for the stove, they said they would ring me back with some prices. They didn't. When I asked why not, they admitted to having written my phone number down wrong. "But I gave you my name as well," I commented, puzzled. "You could have looked me up in the phone book." Then came the flash of realisation. "How are you spelling my name?" I asked, innocently. "Smokeham," came the reply.

I give up. I'm changing my name to Cole. Let's see if they can make a hash of that.

© Tony Holkham 1998

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