Herself was complaining this morning.

There is nothing new there, and I would begin to worry if there were no complaints.  It’s a hell of a long time since there were no complaints.

Anyhows, this morning she was complaining she was cold, which is normally at the top of the list anyway, so I didn’t pay much heed.  I said I would fire up the central heating as the timer had switched the boiler off.  I went out to the boiler and threw the override switch to bring the heating on again.  I went back to my mug of tea and my pipe.

Ten minutes later Herself complained of the cold again.  I assured her I had switched on the boiler, and to prove my point I felt the radiator – stone cold!  Fuck!

I checked the boiler again, and sure enough it was making funny noises.  Normally when I switch it on it starts with a whirring noise as if it’s building up pressure.  It then explodes into a roar as the burners come to life.  This time it was whirring away happily, but instead of exploding into a roar it just gave a quick fart and went back to whirring again.  It just went into an endless cycle of whirr-fart-whirr-fart-whirr-fart.  Shit!  Fuck!  Bugger!

I phoned the bloke who had installed it but naturally he was the other side of the county [just when I want him here].  He knows me though and knows my extremely high intelligence [eat your heart out Trump – I’m the real fucking genius around here!] so he told me I could fix the boiler.

I had never taken the thing apart before [which is very unusual for me] so he gave instructions over the phone as I removed various parts and dropped screws.  It was like those films where a bloke is instructed how to land a plane by an air traffic controller?  He would tell me to look out for a particular wire and which way to follow it and what bits to remove and even how to remove them.  Eventually I found myself crouched in the gloom of the shed with a black cylinder in my hand.  I felt like a bomb disposal bloke who had just removed the fuse from an old wartime bomb.  “Is it black?” say he.  “It is,” says I.  “Is the end of it black?” says he.  “It is,” says I.  “Well it shouldn’t be.  There should be a clean photocell there.  Clean it!” says he.  So I got a Q-tip and polished the black end and sure enough, there was a teenchy little photocell under the soot.  I don’t think I have ever seen one so small.

I reassembled everything and managed to do it without leaving any spare screws, which is a fucking miracle.  I switched on the override and it whirred and exploded into life.  Success!!

So I can now add boiler repairs to my long and impressive CV.

Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?