Washday Blues

Yesterday morning, woke up, turned on shower, put leg into water stream - and froze. No hot water. Dried leg (cold showers after PE lessons at school cured me of ever wanting one again) and dressed. Inspected boiler. Dead. Tried to relight. Nothing.

Waited till 8am and phoned Potterton. Man at helpdesk looked up my contract. Very sorry, contract expired in December. This was not true, so while wife looked up bank statements showing that we have been paying regularly by standing order every month, I was put on to the administration department. After ten minutes of haggling they admitted that their records were wrong and I was given a new contract number and put back to the servicing desk.

Next Wednesday is the first day they can send out an engineer. My contract says they will try and send an engineer the day following a breakdown, so a wait of over a week is a bit steep. I protest, and am eventually phoned back by a supervisor who promises a visit by Tuesday at the latest, and just possibly earlier. That's still a week though, which is a long time to have no hot water and no heating in the house.

I don't know what it is about the great Christian holidays that sends our central heating boiler off the rails. This time it is over an Easter weekend. Eighteen months ago we were without heat and hot water over Christmas because Potterton don't cover holiday emergencies.

The garage I work in during the day is heated by electricity and we have found a small blower heater to warm one room in the house for the student son who is home revising for his exams. As to washing, we spent an hour last night heating pans of water on the gas stove and were eventually able to share a small bath. Not very satisfactory.

The good news is that the cold snap is due to end by tomorrow so we should warm up over the weekend. But I'm missing my hot shower.