Brrr!

I know in my last post I was despairing about global warming, but BRRR! It has been freezing here the last few nights! Our crappy old boiler was on the fritz again on the weekend, so we survived for 3 days and nights with no hot water and no heat. It was like camping, but even less fun, because at least with camping there is hot(ish) water to be had at the communal showers. At least camping, you are semi-warm for 10 minutes out of the day.

I think our gas bill is going to implode this Winter, because we are just beginning to become aware of the utter igloo-like freezingness of our top floor flat. I never understood that all the houses in London are huddled together and piled on top of one another - eureka! - in order to share as much communal heat as possible.

The bedroom and bathroom at one side of the flat are especially cold. The bathroom floor is particularly bracing first thing in the morning - "like an ice-rink" in the immortal words of the Boyfriend. The bed itself has become uncomfortably tomb-like, so that laying your head on the stone-cold pillow at night is eerily similar to laying your head on a marble slab. I feel like there should be an epitaph etched into the bedhead above us, saying "Here lie two poor souls who froze to death before their time".

I am currently petitioning our landlady for a new boiler. We already have plastic sheeting over the windows and vents. Plastic sheeting stuck up with sticky-tape. I would hate to use the phrase "trading on former glories", but it must said that the proud British Empire is certainly not what it used to be.