Some like it cold

We woke up this morning to a warm house but we had had 24 cold, then freezing, hours after our boiler had gone on strike. Worse still, our very trusty heating engineer, Slim, was probably on his annual Scots retreat. And even worse still, we didn’t even have a trusty reserve.

So we did what you round here – go next door, go to other neighbours, go to the newsagent, go to the café….for a personal recommendation. By Saturday lunchtime we had 5 names and numbers of which 4 were unobtainable and 1 was on a job. So, a little desperate, we turned to good old Yellow Pages.

An hour later, an ex-pat Welshman, BI, rolled up and spent an hour dismantling various parts of our ancient boiler and blathering about Cardiff being like Beirut (!?). women were not to be trusted or married, dogs never let you down and how he sailed through his heating course. Meanwhile, SC kept glancing at me with that stroppy look that implied, ‘watch it’.

Needless to say BI finally extinguished his blow-torch and sighed, “You’re gonna need a new boiler. And I can’t do it on me own – I’m gonna get me mate Doddle, and we’re dead busy…and…and…about £3000.”
Result: Abject, cold misery.

SC said that she didn’t trust BI from the minute he walked and said that she phone the ‘man on the job’. MOTJ, Glyn said he would finish his dinner and 15 minutes later he was sitting by our ‘dead’ boiler and replacing the thermocouple. 10 minutes later our boiler was roaring and Glyn, Gawd bless his little fleecy socks, saved us £2960 and departed with profuse thanks ringing around Great Bickering.
Result: Warm happiness AND a very trusty reserve heating engineer.