And that was when...

 

A Victorian school always comes with antiquated heating.

There was a whimper of heat being emitted from a storage heater, which warmed a few centimetres of surrounding air, but did nothing against the cold air that seeped through the steep ceilings with a vertex that soared towards the icy stratosphere. Trapped coiled cold air swirled in the corners of the classroom.

The outside world was covered in ice and snow. I stood outside the school greeting children and their perished parents and telling them to go straight inside as it was too cold for them to stand about on the playground. The children talked of their walk across snowy fields on their way to school with their dogs bounding ahead of them. Then parents left quickly to return to the warmth of their cars and homes, whilst their children went inside quickly and I steadily froze as I waited to meet and greet the next group.

I was shivering by the time I finally got back inside.

And that was when someone gamely switched on a fan heater. Moments later a fuse blew and the heater was banned.

At the end of the school day, I was perished through to my bones.

I craved warmth.

The car heater took an age to warm up on the journey home, it wasn’t enough.

I yearned for a hot bath and lost no time in running one as soon as I got home.

Gradually, in the hot waters, the warmth slowly returned to my spine and I was no longer holding myself taut and hunched.

Relaxed and happy I stepped out of the bath.

I was warm and toasty.

I was warm and cosy.

I was warm and happy.

And that was when I heard the drips, ominous with their tapping repetition, coming from the combination boiler.

It was leaking.

A cushion on a chair directly below it was soaked through, as were the clothes in the clothes basket nearby.

I opened the bathroom window, letting freezing cold air into the room, in order to check on the outflow pipe for the combination boiler. The normal steady one drip of water every few seconds from this pipe outside had created a glacier of ice on the low sloping roof. The pipe was blocked with a thick icicle.

The water with nowhere to go through this frozen pipe must have somehow found a new outlet inside the boiler instead.

And that was when, after quickly positioning bowls to catch these drips, I found myself out on the roof pouring warm water over the frozen pipe; with glacial air  freezing my wet hair and holding my head in an icy grip.

I had the ingenious idea of  drooping hot water bottles over the pipe.

It worked.

Suddenly, there was a gush of cold water. I’d fixed it.

Perished and damp, I climbed back into the bathroom with its now Arctic air and closed the window.

I was cold and shivering

There were still drips coming from the boiler, so I didn’t dare run another bath.  I'd convinced myself that the boiler was probably now damaged and would probably in all likelihood explode if any further demands were made upon it.

There was only one thing to do… go under the duvet with hot water bottles.

And that was when ...

I remembered where the hot water bottles were…

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