I’ve experienced Australia’s winter. I’ve also experience Fargo’s winter, a town made (in)famous by the film of the same name. But nothing’s greyer and sadder than London’s cold months. Primarily because most of the infrastructure (read: houses and buildings) here are not equipped with modern mod-cons. There are some houses with no central heating. Most of the houses and offices have no air-conditioning. And those who do have them, chances are the A/C can’t be tweaked to the right temp so people tend to “fight” over it.

My current workplace is undergoing refurbishment and we lost heating for almost a week. One of the contractors, who were showing early signs of flu weeks before, called yesterday to say he’s got pneumonia. My back is aching and my hands are stiff. Most of the people are wearing their coats and hats in the office! But it’s okay, no one seemed to really mind. Everyone still turn up for work afterall.

Then Monday 4am, I woke up ala-Sixth Sense. You know? With smoke billowing from my breath? pogiBoy was huddled between hubby and I under the duvet, and surprise! he’s not sweating. I touch hubby’s head and his hair was cold. Our boiler broke down!

Usually, I’d panic for two reasons: One we will get sick if it doesn’t get fixed soon. Two, boiler equals lots of lost money.

Thankfully, we have an insurance with British Gas, so now I *only* need to worry about flu, cold, cough and snot.

Last night, we set up our camp of blankets and layers of duvet in front of our electric fireplace. pogiBoy enjoyed it the most. Hubby was peeved I got to sleep nearest the “fire”. We slept in full-battle gear. Layer of clothes and socks. And pogiBoy was also wearing a hat.

I don’t know why but in this part of the world, these sort of calls (as in important ones, like deliveries you’re waiting for) the people ignore the doorbell, they knock once or twice, then they slip you with “Sorry but we missed you” note. So I setup a mini-office in front of our only source of heat, no bathing required, praying I won’t need to pee when the engineer comes a knocking.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 at 6:00 am and is filed under british nga. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.