Holesome boiler

It snowed.

In fact, it was utterly perfect weather for a burst boiler.

Of course Mark mended it.

We got up early and I am pleased to be able to tell you that he welded it all together again before he went to work.

He has not come home yet, because he was a bit later than usual when he set off, because boilers are tricky things, but it is all fixed.

Mark invented the heating system himself, and so he knew how it all ought to work. He turned the water and one of the pumps off and assured me that nothing would explode even if it got hot, because the heating system stops being pressurised once it has a hole in it.

In the event so much water had leaked into the fire that it did not stay lit after we had gone to bed, and we got up to the grey wasteland that houses become when the fire has died.

Despite having had no heating for the whole night, it was not cold. I have got the circulatory system of a desert lizard, and was completely astonished to realise that we have stuffed so much insulation into the cracks that the heat stayed around instead of drifting off to warm the garden.  It was quite comfortable and I did not in the least mind getting out of bed.

I was glad about this. It is a very terrible moment when the house is so cold that you have got to take your clothes into bed to warm them before you put them on, and the toothpaste has frozen in the tube.

We had been worried about the conservatory, because the boiler pumps hot water underneath the floor, and I had been afraid that a hard frost might kill off my little lemon tree, and the banana tree, and the orange tree. There are dozens of hyacinths poking through as well, it would have been terrible if all the green shoots had turned to bitter fingers of ice.

We did have a hard frost, as it happened, before the snow started to fall, but the conservatory stayed warm. Not warm enough to sit around in one’s underwear, or even without a businesslike jumper, but warm enough to be a living hyacinth or banana tree, so that was all right.

When we got up I made breakfast for Oliver and Mark. Oliver had got school, of course, because Gordonstoun still goes to school on Saturdays, so he settled in front of the computer with the lovely electric heater that had been a present from the Peppers, and Mark welded up the hole in the boiler.

This was a terribly messy affair involving a lot of soot. He thinks that it has been leaking a little tiny bit for a while, because some more of the boiler has become corroded that is not around the hole, and so he says that it might be in a vulnerable group with its life in peril if we do not shield it carefully.

Wet soot is not a good thing to leave lying about on the top of a boiler.

Mark thought  that it would probably last out the winter, if we were lucky, and promised that he would take it to bits in the summer when it does not matter.

Also in the summer he can take it to bits in a place that is not the living room. That would also be good.

After that he went to work. It was the last day, because we are hoping that he will be able to have a day off every week, and the obvious one is Sunday when Oliver does not go to school. I am looking forward to this very much indeed.

Once he had gone I cleaned soot up. He had already swept most of it into a bucket as he had gone along, but there is a difference between a house that is clean, and one that just doesn’t have very much soot on the floor.

I am pleased to say that the rest of the day went very well. Oliver finished school at lunchtime, and we walked up to the top of the fell. We could not see anything, because of the winter mist, but we did not mind because we know what the lake looks like. We watched robins and squirrels, and when we came home I baked a cake.

The boiler has been mended.

We have got a day off tomorrow.

The world is a wonderful place.

Have a picture of Mark and the boiler. Please do not worry about the fire hazard of the wood piled up next to it. If you look carefully you can see where Mark built a fence at the side of the hot bit. This holds the wood away from the sides, and although it gets warm and dries out rather nicely, it never gets so hot that it might start to smoulder.

It is lit now, and warming our house beautifully.