Moans & Groans

The week so far has been fairly bleak and I’ve not been having the best of times. After I’d penned and published my blog early on Monday morning, I suddenly realised that it felt chilly in the house and on checking, saw that the central heating hadn’t kicked in. When Phil came down the stairs he checked the boiler and although it was trying to boot itself up, it kept dying out. It was obvious we had a problem so Phil quickly put in a call to Shaun at Red Hot Heating, as he is the best corgi registered plumber for boilers. I was surprised at the boiler not working, it’s not all that old and we only had it serviced at the beginning of September and all was well then. It wasn’t freezing cold but nonetheless we got the fan heaters out and plugged these in round the house.

I woke up not feeling well on Monday and things got worse as the day wore on. Phil and I went round the NH before lunch to have a quick hoover up and clear some leaves from the front garden. The little house on the corner looks so sad, it’s such a shame it still hasn’t sold. After lunch, Phil got stuck into paperwork and I went to fetch Harriet. I’d promised to take her to Primark in Northampton because she had the day off. I nearly picked up the phone to cancel because all I felt like doing was curling up with the duvet in front the TV and the fan heater. But I kept to my word and we got to Northampton without too much trouble. We found Primark and I got some things for Georgina’s Christmas box and Harriet picked out a few things. It’s as cheap as chips in this shop and after we’d shopped till we dropped, we went back to the car and headed for home. Unfortunately it was a nightmare getting out of the town centre and we got horribly lost. At last I found a sign for Newport Pagnell and we got home on the back roads. Not the quickest of routes but I was feeling pretty awful by this point and just wanted to get home.

Yesterday I woke up really early and came downstairs so Phil could sleep. I’m not sure what kind of bug I’ve picked up but I just wish it would go away. I’m fed up of it. There is nothing worse then being up in the early hours especially with no central heating. Still I got washed and dressed when Phil got up and we were just about to go shopping when there was a knock at the front door. It was Kevin from across the road; Phil had quite forgotten that he promised Sandy that he would give him some tuition on his day off. Well that’s not strictly true, Phil had remembered the day before and he’d even been out to Staples to buy some materials in readiness for his lesson. Never mind, I went shopping and left Phil to pass some of his worldly knowledge on to Kevin. What a miserable day it was yesterday, the heavens opened and the rain was relentless.

Phil made us a shepherds’ pie for lunch and very nice it was too. Just a shame, that I had a mega coughing fit much later and threw most of my lunch back up. Very attractive. Shaun, the plumber, arrived just as we were about to go to the health club for a shower. To get to the boiler, and more importantly, to get the boiler housing off, we had to empty all the stuff from the wall cabinet and get this off the wall. My poor kitchen looked like a bomb had hit it. If that wasn’t bad enough, Shaun then made me empty the airing cupboard so he could get to the pump, so all of my linen was strewn all over the spare bedroom. Turns out, the pump is knackered and we need a new one. Shaun banged around a bit with a long screw driver and managed to get the pump going, so at least last night we had heating. He is coming back this morning to fit the new pump. I’m just glad the pump decided to stop working now, and not next month, when we would have been away. At least we are still in the country and can at least get it sorted.