The Boiler Man Cometh…And Cometh….And Cometh….

Things are slowly hotting up around here!.... Not so much Global Warming, as Local Warming.

Whilst I‘d like to claim that this phenomenon is due to the white heat of my industry, or a sudden excess of scorching passion, it’s not.

It’s due to a bloke with some spanners from Milton Keynes (Bloke that is. Not sure where spanners from, and not convinced it matters.)


Ever since I arrived here the heating system has been idiosyncratic to say the least. It has a personality all of its own, and frankly its not that of a very popular person…. A sort of hyper-caustic version of Simon Cowell if you will......... ( I’m so pathetically proud of that bad pun it’s untrue.)

Whenever I want heating or hot water, it either sulks, growls, or roles over and plays dead.

I’ve been complaining about it for six months to the letting agents, and in truth they have been awfully nice about it, for they are awfully nice people. So much so in fact that they appear to devote almost all their time to being nice, and very little to being in any way remotely efficient.

I am usually fairly nice too, but in a sudden burst of “efficiency” I recently wrote direct to the owner of this pile, and made dark mutterings about tenants rights and breaches of faith, and this seems to have partially done the trick. (One of the signs of being a proper grown up I feel is that as you mature, you learn to sleep on hot-headed letters and e-mails, and lower the level of dudgeon in the morning!...After all, as they say, ”publish in haste – repent on someone else’s sofa”)

So the boiler man eventually came, with his spanners and stuff, and changed a load of electrical bits, pronounced the patient cured, and left me with a half-day off work on my hands and some soon to be dashed expectations of a hot bath.

No sooner had he set off again to Milk ‘n’ Beans, than “Simon” hitched up his metaphorical trousers and threw a hissy fit.

Spannerman came back a couple of days later, and changed virtually everything else, so that by default I practically have a new boiler……but with the same old bad habits as soon as his back is turned.

It runs better now, and for longer, but still disappoints at irregular intervals. I am supposed to be keeping a log of its malpractice, in order to present a diagnostic body of evidence to Boiler Bloke, who I’m pleased to say seems to be taking this case to heart. A bit like Doctor Who battling the Darleks.

He’s due back with his sonic spanners sometime soon, though as I write, things have been positively balmy all day.

Instead of being glad of this however, I am experiencing the strange sensation of nearly, almost, actually, quite wanting it to go wrong again, so I can say “I told you so!”

Disclaimer: The author of this post freely accepts that worse things happen at sea, and that poor people in Africa probably would indeed be glad to have my boiler, but finds that a sense of perspective is a hard thing to maintain whilst shaving in cold water.