This morning I got up quite early (for the third day running for a variety of reasons) as I was expecting a boiler-man to come and service our gas-fired boiler. He said he’d be here for 9.00. I was waiting. He arrived at 9.30, apologising for being late. Everything was slow to start this cold morning, he explained, including himself. I know just how he feels. I am slow to start on cold mornings as well.
After he had pottered about doing boiler-man sort of things, he told me of a couple of things that need replacing to extend the life of the boiler. There’s a kind of control board that send messages to bits of the mechanism. It’s been going crazy and misreading the temperature, sending a message to the gas supply that it can cut off for the time being, effectively switching the system off. When we realise that the radiators are going cold and that there is no hot water, we have to press a re-set button. The more frequently this happens, the more chance there is of the whole thing shutting down for good and a new boiler being needed. So he’s getting the relevant bits and pieces and will come back and fix it for us.
We went on to discuss the imminent demise of gas boilers like ours. No more after 2030 declare the government. My boiler-man went into a little rant about government being unrealistic. Not that he is environmentally unaware or a climate change denier. It’s just that the currently proposed alternatives to gas boilers cost a good deal of money. Add to that cost the fact pipes and radiators throughout the house would need replacing, causing major disruption and probably leading to the need for a major redecoration of the whole house, and you have a bill of tens of thousands of pounds. Oh, boy!
This led on to electric cars: a good idea but without a proper infrastructure? They won’t work unless they become as easy to recharge as petrol and diesel cars are to refuel. We didn’t mention insulation at all, which is quite amazing. It seems that most modern problems come from an “I wouldn’t have started from here” point of view. And solutions have to be feasible and affordable to the man in the street, my boiler-man told me.
And this led on to a rant about the government not being in touch with the proverbial man in the street, none of them, and not the opposition either. And by the way, he added, why can’t Labour find a leader who can speak properly and not sound as though they have a speech defect or are at the very least extremely adenoidal!
My boiler-man went on too about older people voting for the Tories, with the exception of his dad and people like us. Some of my generation just never stopped believing the tabloids, he said, and despite thinking that things need to change still seem to accept that the Tories are ‘trying their best”, “doing a good jog under the circumstances. It’s not just older people though, he accepted!
Wow, you could almost see the steam coming out of his ears!
His father, he said, considered himself fortunate. Born in 1943, he saw the NHS come into being, he had free university education, he was able to pay off his mortgage at a reasonable age and was able to retire with a state pension and a teacher’s pension, as did his wife. (His parents sound like a few years older version of us.) And, besides, they lived through the sixties and had all the best music.
And so we finished off our conversation with music: the fact that so many of the great and good are now disappearing, with David Crosby the latest to die on us. But we’ve got the albums and have seen a good number of them live. Even though the boiler man is a generation younger his taste in music coincided with mine.
He wasn’t just a grumpy moaner, ranting on about what’s wrong with the world. Rather, he was an indignant realist, wishing he could change the world but recognising that we still have things to be thankful for.
Goodby David Crosby. And to those of his contemporaries who are still going, in many cases still performing, keep on doing what you’re doing!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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