Bad news

The bad news about the heating came early in the week, one of a succession of events that mean increased expenditure, starting with the car. That saga still continues - the diagnosis of complete replacement of the whole seat base was repeated by the man at the VW main dealer. He also expressed the opinion that it is quite reasonable to have to replace both electric windows after just six years of very occasional use. I tend to disagree. Mr A's had another look at the seat, and we still think that all that's needed is one circlip, which I hope will be addressed this week.

On Saturday night the boiler started to make a loud noise and stopped generating any heat. We had no heating or hot water from Sunday to Thursday, which wasn't too bad for me because I was at school and could exercise and shower at the gym. Mr A had to go for his Driver Refresher Course in Dorset on Tuesday, so took the opportunity to visit friends and use their washing facilities, as well as avoiding three points on his licence. The rest of the time, he just had to live in his room with a fan heater during the day, while we sat on the sofa under a duvet with the fire going in the evening. To be honest, we do that anyway most nights. The boiler's fixed now.

The day after we had that little bit of snow last week, we came down to the kitchen to find that the roof had leaked. The roofer came this morning, and initially thought that we had the option of patching it up. Further inspection, however, revealed clues that all was not well in the layer below the felt, and it's going to need to be completely replaced. This isn't entirely unexpected - when we bought the house, the documents showed the roof had last been maintained in the 1970's, with a predicted lifetime of about 20 years at most.

It hasn't all been bad news this week, in fact there's been some very good news, but I think I'll leave it there and write about the nice things in another post.