Halloween Boiler

I say “boiler” but actually the Sureway Heating operative I spoke to on the telephone rather tartly informed me that what I actually have is a water heater not a boiler.

Whatever it is the damn things is haunted or possessed or has had a section of its metallic intestines pulled through into an inter-dimensional wormhole because it is just not functioning as it should.

In fact it isn’t even functioning as the laws of physics say it should and, you have to admit, it’s got to have a hefty demon on its shoulders to mess with Professor Brian Cox.

Now, I’m no heating / plumbing engineer, but I know that basically what I have in the bathroom is a big heater thing that heats up the hot water passing through it and then transports it to various outlets around the house via a couple of pipes. We don’t have many outlets. Just two sets in the bathroom and one set downstairs. I live in a 3 bedroomed semi not Longleat House after all.

So. In simple terms:

Heater >> short expanse of pipework >> taps.

An elegant little flowchart. Not much room for error.

And yet things are not right.

We have hot water upstairs. The pilot light is on. The water heater blazes inside like a miniature furnace whenever the hot taps are turned to the full-on position.

But we have no hot water downstairs. None at all. The hot tap is turned on, the heater blazes, water gushes through the pipes but it ain’t (even half) hot (mum). It’s stone cold.

How can this be? How can we have hot water upstairs but not downstairs when all the pipes are fed from the same heater? It’s not like the pipes downstairs are several kilometres longer than the ones upstairs to give the water time to cool down. They don’t divert our water through Siberia or Antarctica on its way to the kitchen tap. Where is our hot water going?

The only change of circumstance that has occurred recently has been the arrival of a new bunch of students next door but they look rather sweet and not the type to siphon of hot water illegally from their neighbours. Borrow a couple of herbal tea bags, yes. Nick hot water, no. And besides. As we all know, students and baths / washing up / clothes washing do not mix. The only thing they know to do with hot water is to shove it into a Pot Noodle. And there isn’t a Pot Noodle hunger big enough to warrant the amount of hot water that has gone missing from my house.

So I’ve rung the experts. The guy I spoke to sounded a little perturbed by the problem and is going to send his best man out this week to take a look at it. OK. OK. He’s going to send a man out to look at it. And then we shall see what we shall see.

In the meantime, I’m breaking out the garlic and the holy water and calling a priest.

Our hot water heater has plainly got bad juju.

Things Can Only Get Not Better

I’ve spent the last four Sundays having my weekends lulled into the great infinity of the past to the carefully modulated tones of Professor Brian Cox as he explains to me the Wonders Of The Universe.

There’s not a lot not to like about Professor Brian Cox even though one blogger has described him as having the “nasty wet lips of a rapist”. He’s kind of a human version of Bungle from Rainbow – only with the intellectual capacity of a young Einstein and the enthusiasm for the cosmos of a much thinner, more youth marketable Sir Patrick Moore.

My wife claims he has the perfect voice to fall asleep too (which may explain a lot of the late night phone calls she’s been making) though she’s at pains to point out that it’s not at all because he’s boring. On the contrary, what he says is incredibly fascinating and intellectually dynamic. It’s just that his soft, Rupert The Bear tones are endlessly comforting and after a busy weekend they can tend to have a pleasurably soporific effect.

Personally I stay wide awake to watch the computer generated representations of supernovas and black holes as Professor Brian talks about the end of the universe. That’s the kind of universal Armageddon renaissance man I am.

‘Cos the end of the universe is coming, folks. Professor Brian said so. All this starry shit we’ve got going on at the moment with galaxies and constellations... well, it’s just a passing fad. One day all those little lights are going to go out. All matter will dissipate. And the universe will become one unending stretch of darkness. Time itself will stop because there will be no more change.

Apparently it’s all down to entropy. Entropy is the natural order of things. Everything, given time will break down, collapse, fall apart and dissolve into a uniform state of formlessness.

This may explain my modus operandi at work but the less said about that the better.

I’m not sure how I feel about it really; the end of the Universe. I mean, one could take the bleak approach and think, “Well, what’s the point of it all, then? What’s the point of morality? Of caring? Of procreation? Of Katie Price?”

But the best thing about Professor Brian is his unfailing ability to see the wonder and the wonderfulness in all things. (With possibly the exception of Katie Price.)

Because as Professor Brian explained it, without entropy, without the end of all things being on the cards, we wouldn’t have a beginning of things. We wouldn’t have this miracle of life; this relatively tiny span of time in eternity where life in the universe is possible.

Of course, we wouldn’t have Katie Price, David Cameron and Eamonn Holmes either but I guess for the purposes of infinite possibility we have to accept the shit with the gold.

And so suddenly, it all makes sense. More than that, the preciousness, the sheer miraculous nature of life becomes clear. We’re lucky to be here. It’s amazing we’re all here, right now, together at this point in time. Although technically speaking, cosmologically speaking, this is the only time we could be here.

I think what I like the most about Professor Brian is the way he manages to imbibe hardcore physics with a truly non-denominational sense of spirituality. A sense of meaning, of higher order, of purpose. Without getting all God-bothery about it.

It’s a heady brew to partake of on a Sunday night and I shall miss it now that the series has come to an end.

But those lips... they are nasty and wet, I have to admit.