Well I am learning to appreciate the term “SNAFU” on a personal level these days (Situation Normal: All Fucked Up).

It appears that my daily life now involves lurching from one crisis to the next and weirdly I am acclimatising to this ridiculous way of living.

Carlos finally worked his magic on the washing machine and TOUCH WOOD, SPIT AND TURN AROUND THREE TIMES ALL OF YOU it appears to now work just fine. We have laundry!

Meanwhile the poltergesit that was haunting my washing machine drifted upstairs to cause havoc in the central heating system and also my work laptop, which both went totally haywire in quick succession.

The last couple of weeks looked a lot like this:

Carlos installed 2 new radiators in the living room, accidentally disloging 50 years of gunk and deposits inside the pipes, which clearly no-one has ever maintained or cleaned out since it was built.

Clogged pipes cause boiler failure.

Carlos drains system and refills, flushes it all out, (water comes out black) and bleeds all the radiators. Poiurs more chemicals in to flush out gunk

Boiler fails a few more times, more flushing and refilling and radiator bleeding, much resetting of the thing ensures, including me looking up various error codes until at some point I managed to kill the Nest Smart Thermostat thing dead. (Shock horror it was installed and wired up incorrectly in the first place and so the wrong wires touched at some point and fried themselves).

After spending an entire day on the live chat with Nest/Google to see if it’s under warranty (it is) and they can send one out (they can) but it won’t get here for 5 working days, and it’s bloody freezing temperatures, Carlos is deployed to drive round all of the shops to find a new nest unit and install it before he goes home for the weekend.

Just another standard day over at Chateau d’Omnishambles….

In case you’re wondering, after so many manual resets of the boiler, I have now decided that error code E131 is my favourite, because it’s so pointless. It’s the code that comes up to let you know a manual reset was done after an error code E125 (lack of circulation/clogged pipe error).

I mean I KNOW a manual reset was done, who do they think reset the damn boiler after E125???

So Carlos got it all up and running again, until it started failing yet again….

At which point I thought Ok, so yes, it does look as if the poltergeist haunting my washing machine has moved into the boiler; and yes, this is our second night in a row without any heating or hot water; and yes, I did do 7 different boiler resets and then attempted to wash my hair as it was WAY overdue; and yes, I did try to do another boiler reset mid-shampoo after the hot water cut out; and yes, I did end up kneeling in an inch of tepid water in the bath shivering while I finished my hair wash; and yes, my favourite slippers just fell apart at the seams; and yes, all of my Microsoft office applications have inexplicably died every single day this week, (and last week) causing the IT guy to throw his hands up in despair after reinstalling my apps everyday with no reason why it keeps going haywire; and no, he doesn’t believe my poltergeist theory.

The technology gods have cursed me once again BUT they haven’t got to the kettle yet and there’s nothing as low-tech as a nice warm cup of tea and a toasty hot water bottle SO THERE!!!

Finally, a few days later, after some really loud clanking noises the boiler really did die and stopped letting me reset it altogether.

Thus the next morning went like this:

M-m-m-m-mother-f-f-f-f-f-fucker that’s c-c-c-c-c-cold!!! Shitty-fucking-piece-of-shit-boiler broke again in the shower and I didn’t get to finish my hair wash (again!) because the house is so freaking cold.

Bastard piece of machinery. It’s -2 degrees outside and barely 16 degrees inside. Brrrrrrr

After calliing my insurance company (turns out my boiler was NOT insured even though I was sure it bloody was covered!) and then the company that makes the boiler I managed to fork out an extortionate amount of money for a repair man to come out and fix it, and we spent 2 nights shivering and pretty chilly while we waited for him to come,

So in case you’re still watching this shitshow, we have a totally broken boiler (repair man coming out tomorrow) and a totally screwed work laptop. I’ve delivered the laptop to the office for emergency surgery (aka Full re-imaging process) as they think that my computer has somehow “dropped off the network” but I’m not convinced…

My money is still on “poltergeist” being the problem…

Dashed out to Homebase to find a temporary radiator and they only have comically tiny ones left (so I bought two). Wastepaper basket for scale…

I mean seriously, who is the market for these things? What purpose could a radiator this tiny possibly have?

While waiting for the boiler repair guy, huddled in my dressing gown and clutching my hot water bottle, I pondered what the fuck I was going to do if an entirely new boiler was required (they are NOT cheap) and was VERY annoyed that all the totally practical Christmas gifts I had bought for my daughter (warm fluffy dressing gown, cuddly hot water bottle) had been deployed and would need to be removed and wrapped up later in the most disappointing Christmas reveal ever….

Thankfully the guy was able to repair and fix the boiler (though he spent the whole time telling in no uncertain terms how I had done absolutely everything wrong in the first place).

So we now finally have proper heating and hot water again (FOR NOW! TOUCH WOOD, TURN AROUND THREE TIMES AND SPIT RIGHT NOW! ALL OF YOU!).

And my work laptop is still in the IT Hospital getting wiped and reformatted (and hopefully exorcised while they are at it). Fingers crossed it will be ghost-free when it comes back….

Sitaution Normal: All kinds of Fucked Up.