Shivering Sunday

So a Vaillant engineer did a routine service on my boiler on Friday afternoon. It had been working perfectly, and he pronounced it “immaculate” before leaving. Two hours later, I realised the hot tap was running cold. On looking at the boiler, a red light was on and a fault indicated. I pressed the reset button. Nothing. Then water started running down the boiler over the control panel. I left a couple of messages on the engineer’s mobile and then called some friends for support. I called what I thought was the Vaillant 24-hour breakdown number (I pay quite a lot for annual service and breakdown cover). The nice lady who worked for Homeserve said Vaillant don’t come out beyond 8am-6pm. I lodged an official complaint. We rang many supposedly emergency plumbers, none of whom answered on an early Friday evening. The Vaillant engineer called back. Hooray! He came over 20 minutes later, however he could only stop the leak but not fix the problem in the control panel. He came back again on Saturday with a replacement part he hoped might do the trick. It didn’t. He’s now ordered a bigger part, but it won’t be with him until Tuesday. So I am without heating and hot water for several days. I have no electric-powered backup, so my friends have lent me an oil-filled electric radiator, a fan heater (which I’m trying not to use as it gobbles power) and, as I write this backblip on Monday, I’ve been round to theirs on Saturday and Sunday evenings to use their shower and will go there again tonight. I am so lucky to have them, and the other friends who have offered help if I need it.

Meanwhile, my mobile phone, which is running out of space, threw a fit and reset itself. I lost hundreds of emails that I’d moved into labelled folders for easy location. These included all the correspondence with the three solicitors about Mum’s probate, the sale of my flat and the transfer of the bungalow into my name. I logged onto the webmail version, but they had disappeared off there too. I have to say, BT/EE have been brilliant and, as of yesterday (Sunday) all it’s happily fixed and I can once again access all the folders and their emails. Phew! *But* the email app on the phone has re-downloaded literally thousands of old emails which I hadn’t deleted on the webmail, so now I’m having to wade through all of those and re-delete all the ones I don’t want.

As I said on Saturday’s blip, it never rains…..