One word? When seven would do…

Ady woke me at about 6am to say the boiler wasn’t working this morning. We have a combi boiler which heats the hot water for the water and heating as it goes through so we have no tank or immersion. It seems the pilot light had blown out during the very windy night and is refusing to be lit again.

I tried to go back to sleep (no real reason to actually get up and the thought that it would be cold wasn’t exactly motivating) but I couldn’t get properly back to sleep and had lots of troubled dreams about broken down cars and boilers in emergency situations. The children were then finding their own way to keep warm downstairs which seemed to be in the style of ‘Mad Lizzie’ Webb from breakfast tv of days gone by and included lots of noise and thudding and the Star Wars sound track. All of which meant when I did get up and come downstairs it was with a headache.

The kitchen was a shambles – last night’s washing up was everywhere, Ady had taken the front off the boiler and leant it against the back door, the pots and pans which normally sit on top of the boiler were on the worktop and only after I tipped the end of the milk on the kids cereal did I realise that meant there was none for a cup of tea.

While I was boiling kettle-fulls of water and pans on every gas ring to get hot water for washing up I rang my parents to see if Dad could get hold of his plumber. My Dad is a builder and has a plumber, electrician, bricklayer, carpenter etc that he uses and subs out to sometimes. I was also trying various methods of getting the pilot light to stay lit too. My Dad wasn’t home but my Mum rang back and was not only spectacularly unhelpful she was also incredibly unsympathetic :(.

When I explained our plight of no hot water, heating, method of drying the wet load of laundry sitting in the washing machine etc. did she offer use of her tumble drier? For us to go and use either of their two baths? For us to move in there until it was sorted? Did she hell – she said she’d go and find their phone book and read me out some numbers for plumbers if I liked.

That pretty much finished me off so when Ady rang me to see how I was he got an earful ending with ‘and there’s no fucking milk!!!!!’.

Davies was dressed by then so I asked him if he wanted to nip round the shop for milk and he did. So it was his first time round there to buy something (he’s been to the postbox round there a couple of times before). He came back with the milk and the change and told me how much it had been. I said he could keep the change (50p) so he promptly went back round to get some sweets. He came back with a packet each for him and Tarly and told me how many more packets he could have bought with the money :). I was impressed with his independance, his demonstration of mathematics in practise and of course extremely grateful for the milk so I could make a cup of tea.

I’m ashamed to say I have spent most of the day being intolerant, short tempered, impatient and generally grumpy 🙁

We had planned to go ice skating this morning but with the whole boiler thing and the fact Scarlett couldn’t find her gloves (she has several pairs, one was left behind at Liza’s but she has at least one other pair that I saw around the place last week) we didn’t make it. They have hour sessions starting on the hour so once we’d missed the 10am one I lost the inclination to bother.

Instead I spent some time playing Davies’ DS and checking roadside recovery breakdown cover prices online. They did some lego playing, some DSing and watched some TV.

We had lunch and then it was swimming lessons in the afternoon. It’s been sunny and dry here today and the car was fine.

Scarlett’s lesson was first. She did some excellent backstroke. Davies went off to the big pool and came back shortly afterwards to say one of the lifeguards had told him he shouldn’t be in there on his own. He’d said he’d been in before and she said to him ‘probably with your mummy or daddy’ and then walked away from him dismissively.

I was probably spoiling for a fight really so I went over, probably with a thunderous look about me, trailing my small dripping child behind me and asked ‘is there a problem with my son being in the pool?’. She asked how old he was (why didn’t she ask him?) and when I said 8 she started to backtrack. She said he was a weak swimmer and shouldn’t really be in the deep end. I said fair enough (although I don’t actually agree, he is strong enough to do 2 lengths albeit at a slowish pace) and that he would stay in the shallower end then. She then tried to be all smiley and said ‘he’s a great little swimmer though..’ but we’d already started to walk away.

I appreciate the rules, I appreciate her doing her job but the rule is age related not height or even swimming proficiency related. Why couldn’t she have just asked Davies his age and maybe suggested to him he stay more in his depth? He’s actually very sensible and very aware of his own limits – probably because that’s the way he’s been treated by us and is able to determine these things for himself rather than have them enforced on him. If I thought for one second he wasn’t safe to be in that pool alone then I wouldn’t let him be there regardless of how old he is. Grrr.

Davies had a good lesson too, his style is really improving and he looks like he’s properly doing swimming strokes now rather than doggy paddling.

The kids both had showers and hair washes there rather than a bath at home as usual. We drove past the ice rink so we could have a quick look at it and definitely want to go there as soon as we have a free day to do so. Scarlett is motivated to find those gloves now ;).

Ady had already beaten us home and had a fire lit. Upstairs isn’t too cold anyway, the bathroom is freezing but as we’ve no hot water for baths it doesn;t really matter. Scarlett’s bedroom is often cold but with the back of the chimney, a hot water bottle in her bed and a heater on in there for an hour before bed it was fine. The kitchen is warm if you’re in there cooking and the fire is lit in the lounge, we don’t need to go in the playroom anyway so it’ll be fine.

I spoke to Dad and his plumber mate is away til the weekend. I’m fairly sure it’s the thermacouple that’s gone which is a small and easy job but beyond us really so we’ll wait. We’re focussing on how wonderful that first bath will be when it’s all working again.

I made the kids tea and boiled up more pans and kettles to fill the flasks with hot water for washing up. Davies and I watched 10000 BC which was fairly rubbish and pretty violent. Scarlett dipped in and out of it and did some DSing.

Then to make up for being shouty and not particularly engaged I read them the end of the Humphrey book which was the last six chapters, so we ended on a high note :).