Dagnabbit!

My boiler has given up the ghost. This morning's shower was more of an impromptu exhibition of freestyle swearing in a confined space than anything to do with personal hygiene. I did what I could to try to coax it into life (viz. twiddling the knob on and off and looking hopeful) to no avail. Our trusty plumber is coming tomorrow to perform the last rites. And my mother will be on standby with her "I told you so" expression as she (quite rightly) reminds me that she recommended I sign up to the servicing and support programme from British Gas ages ago and I never got round to it.*

Husband is fortunately/unfortunately away on business until tomorrow night so at least there will only be one odouriferous** person floating about the house. The children don't count - they are boys and stinkiness is their natural condition. So husband, if you are reading this in your heated hotel room, make sure you have a shower before you come home. Just in case.

In other news, our car exhaust fell off at the weekend, a mere four days before its properly organised and scheduled service and MOT, which is just about the most annoying thing a car can do.

Our home laptop has also fallen by the wayside in the last week or so. It lost its wireless connectivity and husband managed to find much angry discussion on the forums (fora?) about how Compaq laptops have a design flaw which makes them run too hot and bits basically melt and stop working. Like the wireless thingy. Or the screen. Both of which are kind of important. There is a manufacturer's recall for some models, but not for ours. Customer Services on the phone could only offer us a repair which we didn't want because the repairs clearly don't work, according to the disgruntled masses who had already been down this route.

Undaunted, the two of us, both lawyers, settled down and wrote the kind of carefully crafted letter that is guaranteed to send your average customer services rep running whimpering for cover. The letter included the helpful suggestion that PC World's staff should stop telling people that if their goods don't work, PC World are legally entitled to try to repair them on the fairly reasonable basis that this is NOT TRUE!! We magnanimously offered to accept a replacement rather than demanding hard cash back and lo and behold, we were offered by return enough PC World gift vouchers to replace the laptop with one that works. In fact, we might get something even shinier.

I am now hoping that, three major pieces of crucial equipment having failed in the last 10 days or so, we are out of the woods. These things come in threes, don't they?

* Anyone else remember when tacky seaside gift shops used to sell plain round wooden boards with "A Round Tuit" painted on them? Because now you had got "a round tuit" you would do all those things you had been meaning to do for ages? No? Only me then........

** Husband's favourite ever word, culled from legal correspondence about a malfunctioning septic tank (yes, the law is that glamourous) and one we use in our house a lot.