Friday 30 September 2022

(No) Hot Water

Yesterday, Casa K found itself without hot water and the frankly unqualified and fruitless attempts to solve this mystery got in the way of any attempt to draft today's post. I'm also rarely organised enough to have 'emergency' posts prepped and ready to go, just in case, much preferring to make things up as I go along. Unfortunately, this doesn't get you anywhere in the world of boiler repair.

My friend Jayne was a huge Level 42 fan back when we were at school. I wasn't, but you couldn't ignore Mark King's formidable thumb and so Hot Water immediately sprang to mind as I stared helplessly at the control panel, hoping, praying that this time maybe switching it on and off again would actually make a difference....

After Mrs. K made multiple calls to the company that services the boiler (they always promise to call you back, and never do), she was advised with a sigh of indifference that to would be approximately 4 weeks before someone could call out to repair.

A few more calls around and we - hopefully - will get someone else out by next Tuesday. We think it's probably the same problem with a diverter switch that we had last year: we live in a very hard water area and the thing just got stuck on heating. However, it's internal and beyond the reach of mere mortal hands, so even a temp fix isn't possible. The reality is that the cost of repairing this will be inversely proportionate to the size of the item.
 
This situation - and the end of a particularly challenging week at work - made it all the more poignant when the single version of Shot By Both Sides by Magazine was the first song to explode from my car stereo when I began the long drive home.

I've found a YouTube clip of a live performance for Belgian TV show Folllies on 2nd July 1979. It's both rather odd and really wonderful and better than the Top Of The Pops appearance which inevitably is far too short and cuts away part way into the guitar solo. Criminal!
Barry Adamson apparently learned to play bass overnight so that he could audition for Howard Devoto and John McGeogh in 1977, joining Bob Dickinson and Martin Jackson in the first lineup of Magazine. Shot By Both Sides was Magazine's opening salvo less than six months later and sounds as exciting now as it did when I first heard it in the 1980s.
 
And, for this music lover, Bazza on bass beats Mark King every time. 
 
Normal service will resume on Saturday, but may start to pong a bit by Sunday...

4 comments:

  1. why do boilers always wait for colder weather before doing this?

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    1. I know what you mean, middle aged man! In fairness, we should have expected it as we live in a hard water area and things scale in the blink of an eye, so having the heating off for several months was asking for trouble. It's just a pain in the arse that the switch/valve got stuck on heating rather than hot water as we could have managed without the former for a while longer!

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  2. Agreed about Barry's bass - such a great song, and the clip/performance too. Shame you can't say the same about your boiler's performance... wishing you lots of luck in getting it fixed asap. We had no hot water for a long spell one time - a problem with the hot water tank rather than the boiler in our case - and became so used to having to heat water up in saucepans on the hob that when we finally got it sorted it seemed almost magical to actually have it come out of a tap!

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    1. Thanks, C. I have a very vague childhood memory of the three-day week, although we seemed to experience frequent power cuts when I was growing up. One year, it happened on Christmas Day and the turkey ended up roasting over the log fire, along with pots of veg, spuds, you name it! Not quite the same scenario here but I think we're all looking forward to the boiler engineer's visit this week...!

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