Wet Christmas

It has been a very busy day.

I have been getting things ready for our holiday, and have been so excited about it all I was even thrilled to be ironing shirts.

We have had a completely unexpected bonus as well, you might remember the boiler problems we were having. The boiler that we bought leaked, and the people we bought it from wouldn’t change it unless we agreed to buy another first and send the old one back to them, then they would refund the money if and when they had decided if the old one was actually leaking or not.

We got upset and angry, and then decided that it was better to live a contented and cheerful life, so we would not argue with them. We decided that we would just mend the boiler that we had as well as we could and get on with our lives. It is horrible to have to fight people, I hate doing it, the cross feelings eat me up from the inside and take all the happiness out of everything. I stop noticing the birds singing because I am turning my troubles over and over in my head.

We thought hard about all of this, and eventually we decided that it was better to have a leaky boiler than live in a world where we were feeling angry and betrayed and upset for three weeks until it got sorted out.

Then the day before yesterday, completely unprovoked by us, and without any explanation, to our complete astonishment the boiler manufacturers called us up to say that they had had a change of heart and were going to send us a new boiler after all.

It arrived by courier yesterday afternoon, and Mark spent all day today    making a sooty mess in the living room changing boilers over. I was so pleased that we had got both a contented life and a new boiler I didn’t mind the mess in the least. We sent them a box of chocolates to say thank you for their helpfulness, they are a fairly small company and boilers are expensive, so it was all a huge relief. Sometimes life works out beautifully well, we are so very fortunate.

I did ironing and packing and feeding children whilst Mark bashed about the living room with his spanners. By the end of the day we had a beautifully working boiler, and an enormous suitcase neatly packed with our nicest clothes, although now I am out on the taxi rank I keep remembering things I had not thought of and am having to make a list that I don’t doubt I will have lost by the time I get home. We are going to set off tomorrow as soon as we get up, it is so lovely to be on the eve of a holiday.

Oliver’s best friend Harry moved into a bed on Oliver’s floor as soon as his term ended, there have been various squawks and crashes coming from Oliver’s room all day. I don’t think either of them got dressed this morning, they turned their attention to vanquishing zombies as soon as they got up, and apart from brief breaks to collect tuck or pizza or apple juice they have been completely occupied all day. I thought they were just playing on the computer, but when I went up to put washing away there was such an amazing mess in there it was clear that they have been quite busily engaged doing all sorts of things, all of which appeared to be variations on a theme of zombie-despatch.

I don’t in the least mind them playing indoors at the moment, usually they are off to the park or on their bikes, but the weather is wet beyond anything we have ever known. It is raining as I write, and has rained now for days. The floods are gone, apart from in hollows in fields, but the rain has not stopped, and everything is soaked.

We have got a dehumidifier, which is good fortune, and we have had it running non-stop in the house for a week now. It holds a gallon of water, and is full every morning when we come to empty it. Despite that, black mould is spreading its horrible fingers everywhere, you can actually see it on the photograph, that ghastly mass of it on the wall has appeared in less than a fortnight. We have got some stuff that gets it off very nicely, before we go tomorrow I am going to spray it everywhere and hope it kills it off.  The walls in every room are wet to the touch and all of the windows are covered with thick beads of condensation.

It is most peculiar weather for December, warm and humid and wet, if it is because of global warming and likely to keep happening, we will have to buy another couple of dehumidifiers, because one is simply not enough. I am broadly in favour of global warming, especially in the summer, but I would appreciate some global drying to go with it, especially in the Lake District this week.

I don’t suppose it will last for much longer. Maybe by the time we get back everything will have started to dry out.

Christmas really starts tomorrow.