No one is certain about the legends that exist that the cave men's courtship rituals involved beating their would-be partner over the head with a club and then dragging her home by her hair. It doesn't, in all honesty, sound like the ideal way to get a loving wife.

It is actually far more likely that the successful caveman got his women by providing them a warm dry cave protected for wild animals and the elements. Look at how weaver birds build a nest and hope to attract a female into it. If it isn't just right, providing shelter from the elements and a dry warm hollow with enough bare branch above assuring the mother weaver that no snakes will get her young she just won't move in. (In this instance you might actually see a weaver tear the nest apart and start again.)

The message to all is clear; if you want a female to life happily in your home then it must be warm.

In the UK, from sometime in October until late April the days draw in and the Sun no longer provides much warmth. As soon as the first chill strikes all households start thinking about warming up the homes, and many shudder at the thought as, whichever system it is that you have the recent and ever increasing energy costs are frightening.

Ranging from the most expensive down to the least costly is more or less as follows. Air Conditioning; great to have but for it to even remotely be practical in a home it can really only be done in a few closed room which are fairly well insulated. One of the reasons it is so expensive is that fan are forever pushing the air around.

Electric fires, radiator bars with or without a fan consume the current stated on the product but in a medium sized parlour for example anything under 1.5Kw to 2 Kw is going to be just too little except for those sitting close to them. And as you know a 2 Kw heater spread 3 or 4 times around the house very soon makes up 200 Kw per day burning at peak charging times.

Electrical oil radiators are great for getting the chill off the room and help for those sitting right on top of them but are unlikely to manage to get the room uniformly up to a comfortable temperature.

Gas/Electric central heating. To run the central heating for prolonged periods is constantly but it does have the advantage of making the entire house warm (or at least for all those rooms where you have opened the radiator). Most nowadays have a timer so one can set it to start say 30 minutes before the first person rises, thus getting out of bed is not such a chore and switch off 30 minutes to an hour before everyone leaves for work/school. Then set it to start as it is getting dark and turn off before the normal bed time.

Oil fired central heating is similar to Gas Electric and used to be cheaper but this is no longer necessarily the case with oil prices shooting through the $100 per barrel level and unlikely to come down much.

Whichever system of home heating it is that you use remember that a cold house will be miserable and unproductive while a warm home will always feel welcoming.