Oh dear.

Had the "can we please get solar panels" talk with the parents on Friday evening. Didn't go down too well. Dad mentioned him and Mum going on holiday in September and I said if perhaps you didn't then there would be a spare couple of thousand of pounds floating about wouldn't there. I said wouldn't it be nice to use that money to get some solar panels and get free hot water for life with 0 carbon emissions. I even offered to pay my £1000+ university tuition fees myself out of my savings to free up an additional thousand pounds in the household budget for some panels.

Solar panels for the average family house cost about £5000. You can get a government grant to pay for half of this so it would only cost us £2500 to get panels and I figured £1000 could come from me paying my tuition fees instead of my parents and £1500 from them not going on holiday.

But Dad just laughed. And said I was the Dick Strawbrigde of the family. Which is an extremely high compliment to make but I still would have preferred a "great idea Charlotte! Why didn't we do it before!" response. Or him saying I was the James Strawbridge of the family, that would have been even better. And Mum... well Mum got a bit angry and said she couldn't put up with any more being green stuff. To be fair she is starting a new job today and is very stressed but again I would have preferred a "great idea" response.

I then said ok, well I won't mention solar panels again but I will move on to talking about switching our electricity supplier to a green renewable supplier next week. HA.

PS. Mum hope you enjoyed the Fairtrade coffee samples I gave you to take on the train to your new job this week. x