I burn for you, woodburning stoves

It has happened. Every year I spend weeks gradually building up the layers of clothing that I'm wearing until one day I realise that I'm shuffling, armadillo-like, through the flat with my duvet wrapped around me. On this day I finally cave and turn on the heating. I blame this reluctance to turn on the heating not only on British Gas but also on my father, whose cry of "Oh for God's sake pooch, it's not that cold. Just put on another jumper" reverberated through the halls of my childhood home in Portugal. Portuguese houses are built of stone to keep the cold out, which makes them quite uncomfortable during the winter and my father would wander about swaddled in multiple layers and muttering curses about waste under his breath as he fiddled with one of our gas heaters in a resentful fashion because one of his daughters had stood over him insisting that being able to see your own breath inside the house wasn't normal. Luckily, given that most Portuguese winters were so warm that we'd have to leave the french windows open in the evenings when we had the fire going so that we could roast chestnuts and enjoy the atmosphere without overheating, it wasn't a situation that happened very often. I really regret that because of a particularly bad smog in the 50's that killed several thousand people, Londoners are quite severely limited in what they can burn in their fireplaces. However, smokeless fuel does make a woodburning stove possible and after spending a long weekend with one glowing cozily in the living room, I'm trying to come up with foolproof plans to make my landlord install one for me. Persuasive plots and schemes on a postcard to the usual address please.