So much for holidaying. The news from Newcastle (newscastle?) is that my boiler is not working. This is bad news, even worse for the guy living in the house. With no boiler there's no hot water, and the tenants, when they first moved in, replaced the water-heating shower with one that uses hot water from the boiler. There were good reasons for this, the lack of water pressure being the prime candidate, but the end result is that everything in the house that's wet is also cold. Cold and wet - two words that sound bad together, except when used to describe a nice beer.

So, yesterday, having pittled around on the internet for an hour, I had to order another hour's internet access in order to pittle around some more working out how to start getting the boiler progressed from off-due-to-condemnation towards fully-working-due-to-non-condemnation. It's easy to condemn the boiler, but it's not its fault. The fault lies with the small gas leak - I wondered why the gas bill was so high, some ventilation (oooh, smelly) and the need for a switched, fused, spur, rather than a junction box. None of these should be a big deal. Except the gas leak, which could be the big deal of the year.

Oh, one small thing... if any of the operational parameters of the boiler change too much, and it fails... then there's no repair and a £6000 (count 'em) replacement cost for the entire heating system. Oh the happy times are here again.

So. It's nice and relaxing here on my holiday.