Saturday, April 08, 2006
The great unwashed: It's been a week now since I last had hot running water in my flat. I luxuriated in a lovely long hot bath last Saturday, but when I came to run a bath on Monday morning only cold water was forthcoming. My boiler's always been a little temperamental, sometimes refusing point blank to fire for a couple of days or maybe just spluttering weakly a few times before finally igniting. This week, however, there's barely a flicker of life and no chance whatsoever of even an inch of hot water. It's been a great excuse for leaving my washing up piled up, but no so good on the personal hygiene front. I don't have a shower so I've had to make do with a kettleful of boiling water in the sink instead and a bit of strategic scrubbing. My grandparents would have thought nothing of it, but I'm starting to feel just fractionally unclean after going 168 hours without a full body immersion. And please don't suggest I take a trip to a swimming pool, thanks - they are the devil's places, and I'd rather stink. Which hopefully I don't. My letting agent assures me that the necessary 'replacement part' should be available on Monday, at which point a nice man should come round to fix everything, so hopefully I've only got another 60 skin-crawling hours to go. Obviously the very last thing I should be doing in these circumstances is spending today walking the London suburbs and working up a sweat. Damn. My apologies to anybody I might sit next to on the train later.
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