Freeeezing!!!!!!!!!!!!

My god the weather sure has turned hasn't it?????

As wonderful as yesterday was, I can honestly say that I have never been as cold for as long in my entire life and I include the night I spent sleeping out in Toronto in the middle of winter at -15 degree snow for tickets to see Bruce Springsteen at the Maple Leaf Gardens in 1980!

It's not like I was in a chiffon frock either. I had on jeans, a hoodie and a leather jacket but I simply could not get warm. Nipping outside once an hour for a fag didn't help of course but the 15 minutes I had to wait for my bus home I genuinely thought bits of me would start dropping off!

Now I know that I am carrying a lot less padding - 106lbs less to be exact - but surely its not natural to feel this cold?!?!?!?!?

All the way home I nurtured plans to crank the heating up and have a boiling hot shower to warm my bones. The engineer had been before I went out to sort out a little niggle with the hot water so everything was bound to be working fine ... wasn't it?

I switched up the thermostat, expecting to hear the familiar click of the boiler kicking into action, but there was nothing. Now I'm no central heating engineer - surprise surprise - so I did the standard thing of switching the boiler on and off a couple of times and that seemed to work.

I made a cup of mint tea, and turned the shower on...freezing.

I let it run a bit, even colder.

Gave up and turned the shower off, then tried the taps - nope they were ice cold too.

There was an emergency number to call for just such a thing, sadly it consisted of a woman sitting in her house fielding calls and compiling a list at midnight which is then emailed to the office.

I re-boiled the kettle and settled for a wash before giving up and getting into bed in an attempt to get warm. I never sleep with the heating on, but last night I did!

This morning I got a call at 8.50 from the company. They were chasing up the parts and would get back to me. Now, as luck would have it, I wasn't working tonight, so not being able to shower today wasn't the end of the world, but I'm in Watford this weekend and there's no way I can go onstage stinky!

I meditated and chilled out, came to the conclusion that if I had to choose between heating and hot water, it was better that the hot water was off.

I gritted my teeth and washed my hair in cold water, then did what my mum used to call a 'birdbath' washing my bits standing at a sink filled with hot water from the kettle. I went out just to stop myself getting worked up about it all. It was another cold day today too, so I wore the new puffa jacket I got from Uniqlo the other week. Something tells me I am gonna get my money's worth out of that this winter!

At 4pm I rang up to see what was happening and was told an emergency engineer would come out tonight anytime between 5 and 12 pm. He didn't have the parts but he would take a look.

At 6.39 this evening, my hero arrived. According to him I didn't need any new parts, I needed more pressure! They'd been replacing the water mains in my street a few weeks ago and I did notice the water was coming out of the taps a lot slower afterwards. God bless him, two and a half hours later I had scalding hot water coming out of my taps and the shower is now a power shower!