davidn

"The boiler's broken," Whitney announced to me as I came in from lectures. This is probably one of the more frightening things to happen when you're just starting out living independently - in Melville I never needed to worry about things like the boiler unless my hot tap became slightly less scalding than before, or when they over-enthusiastically added something to the water that inflamed all the residents' skin when they showered. However, now that we're in Cupar it was a matter of having a large amount of metal in the kitchen at head-height that may explode without warning. I looked at it and found that it was blinking its lights frantically, so decided that it was best to turn it off.

After finding the helpline phone number, I was taken through a large number of pointless checks on my address and serial number before it was revealed to me that all I had to do to restore balance to the Force was turn a black bit of plastic underneath the boiler quarter of the way round, therefore putting more water in from the mains and repressurising it. I thanked the engineer and hung up, unable to shake the feeling that I'd just asked something equivalent to "How do I change my homepage in Internet Explorer?". But it was nice to know that our lives aren't at risk just yet.