Back home - Gremlins!

Got back to London about 4 pm - having avoided a 70 minute delay on the M4, which was showing on the gantries and on my satnav, by going round the M25 to the M40.  Unpacked the car and immediately took Suki out for a short walk as it was getting dark.  Lorraine was in and she told me that my computer had packed up when she tried to use it - stuck in a "startup repair was unable to repair this computer" loop.

Mike came in from ringing QPs about 6 pm and told me that the Dice clock had gone haywire and had become extremely temperamental.  Seemed like gremlins had moved in while I had been away!!

Then the next morning the heating failed to come on - tried all the usual things but it sounded like the pump had stopped working.  Weather was freezing  and Cantanti people coming to lunch!  We managed to keep the living room reasonably warm with the gas fire in the front bit and the electric heater in the back bit, and having the oven on from 11 am also helped.  The lunch went well, as did the handbell rehearsal, and for once I got the proportions about right so there was very little left over. The lamb from the butcher in Bovey was wonderful - as were the cherry pies from the bakers.  I managed to do all the washing up, and walk suki, before the Chiswick ringers turned up for a handbell practice.  Then when they went we had more cherry pie, with Monica, and a glass of wine before going up to bed and turning on the convector heater in the bedroom.  Luckily the immersion heater was very effective and there was plenty of hot water.  Lorraine was staying at Carolyn's for the night, after going to Winter Wonderland with friends, so she was well out of it.

On Monday Mike rang MyPlumber and arrangements were made for a plumber to come the next day, so we kept the heater on in the bedroom and I just braved the rest of the house occasionally when necessary.  Went to Zumba at 12.15 - it was good to do something aerobic and warm up.  In the afternoon investigated the problem with the computer.  It was not possible to solve it and I resorted to a Dell backup and recovery which put it back to the factory settings, but without losing any personal files or data.  Not that I keep much on the hard drive as I keep just about everything on external hard drives.  Went ringing in the evening and to the pub afterwards.  Girl behind the bar was completely different this time - very pleasant and amiable and not in the least put out by the order coming in dribs and drabs as people drifted in.  Gremlins attacked again when I got in - my phone refused to charge, so I turned it off and picked up the ipad - which promptly refused to open up and I had to force a reboot.

Tuesday morning the plumber turned up nice and early at 8.15 - and did not leave until 10.30!  So I missed my fitness class.  He changed the pump and managed to get the boiler to work - but it was sluggish and leaking so we have decided to have a new one and will have to say goodbye to our reliable Potterton workhorse which has been in since we bought the place in 1989!  It was wonderful to have heating again - and we have to keep it on until the new boiler comes in case the old boiler won't light again once it goes off.  I did all the washing and made good use of the radiators being on all day to dry it.  The rest of the day was spent setting up my computer - all the programs I had loaded were lost so I needed to install them all again, including the printer and the scanner.  I decided to try a different anti virus program this time and have installed Avira.  It was all very time consuming - with lots of reboots required, and I decided once I had got the basics working to leave installing the rest of the programs until I actually needed them. It was 9 pm before I knew it - so I missed my swim too.

Wednesday 25th - went over to see Keith, to discover that his heating had broken down on Sunday morning, and I later found out that my sister's heating had stopped working the same day.  So the Gremlins weren't just at work in our house.  I did the usual bits and pieces for Keith - the engineer was there when I got back from Sainsbury's but the boiler needed a new part so it wasn't actually fixed until the next day.  In the evening went over to James Smith's place and rang a peal of Plain Bob Major with Arthur and David Maynard.  It was Arthur's first peal and it was quite a good one - certainly much better than the previous attempt.

Thursday I tried out the Zumba Gold class - and enjoyed it although it was definitely less lively than the normal Zumba sessions.  In the evening went out for supper with Pru and Caroline - we went to Azzurro and I had the rigatoni arrabiata again which was delicious.

Friday 27th - Amanda's birthday. Mike went into work. Went over to Steve's and rang a handbell peal of Kent TB Royal - my 400th peal.  There was a bit of a schmozzle towards the end when Steve put a bob in a lead early, but he was able to put us all into the right place and it was otherwise very good. In the evening went to collect keys from East Sheen on the way to Barnes.  A house had collapsed into the road near White Hart Lane and the road was closed, causing huge traffic chaos.  It took me an hour and a half to get to Barnes.  Came home straight after ringing and had a veg stir fry which was much better for me than something with chips in the pub.

Popular posts from this blog

Christmas Newsletter 2018

Saturday 1 February

Roving Ringers Reunion Weekend 21-22 Feb