Anyone living in the UK for the past week will know all about the ‘Beast from the East’. This belt of Siberian based wind caused the mother of cold snaps back here in Blighty for the space of about a week.
The bitterly cold winds and sub-zero temperatures were enough to convince me to forget about the trains – growing more facial hair and working from home was the intention for the next few days – I couldn’t see the railways coping with a journey to the site of my workplace in Guildford, a suspicion borne out by the travel horror stories being endlessly streamed on TV and Radio.
The first hit from the Beast came after returning to the family home after trudging through the snow scape that was New Malden. The net result of this visit (apart from getting a square meal) was me contracting a particularly bad cold that had infected both my sister and mother.
This kicked in pretty quickly, and the ensuing hacking cough and shivers insured that my priorities shifted to keeping warm and making sure I was near a ready supply of Lemsip. My appetite was knocked on the head too – for the first time in years I failed to finish my traditional midweek kebab – as you could tell, things were getting pretty serious!
It wasn’t long before the beast struck again. On a really freezing morning (it had been as low as -9 degrees Celsius) my flat felt as chilly as the snow outside. This shouldn’t have been the case as the heating had been left on overnight, but the radiators in my flat were cold , and there was absolutely no hot water. It was all down to my boiler – it just couldn’t fire up to do the warming.
The plumber was really busy, and could only make it over in the late afternoon. He identified the problem as a frozen outside pipe, and with the help of my trusty kettle, managed to de-thaw it. The boiler once more sprang to life. I was never so relieved to see hot water running from the taps again!
With the boiler back in action, the heating system kicked in, and the next couple of days I made sure that the temperature in the flat was high enough to ensure that no further freezing could take place. I was also hoping that the added warmth would help with my cold, which was hanging around long enough to be really annoying.
Then, on Saturday, I awoke to find that the snow had cleared! The Beast had indeed gone, but in a parting swipe of an icy talon he left his final mark. The sound of running water from the back yard was not what I was expecting that morning, and it left me feeling uneasy.
A foray into the garden confirmed its source – an outside pipe had ruptured due to the rapid rise in temperature. Water was splashing over the yard in a full flow, and to make a rubbish situation much worse, the valve that cut the water supply was not working either.
It took the best part of two hours to find a plumber who could make it to the flat. He cut the water supply from the outside, and working at an impressive speed, installed a working water valve, and fixed the leaky outside pipe.
The legacy of the Beast is still present to this day – in terms of plumber’s fees I had to shell out a sum just south of £500, and my cold, like a bad smell in a lift, is still hanging around!
I guess the moral of this sad tale is to re-train as a plumber.
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