Brave New World

So, the weather in London is like this:

Cloudy 11°C
SE (11 mph)
Relative Humidity (%): 82,
Pressure (mB): 1004, Falling
(wtih thanks to the BBC).

Which is to say it is FREEZING, making it about the 8th return of winter for the year by my count. But, because it is about to be June, and June is summer, the heating has been switched off by the estate management. I love a culture that applies the inexorable logic of "it is not cold in May" regardless of weather conditions.

So, we have a pretty cold flat, and a whole bunch of useless bank heaters. Fortunately the hot water tank is so poorly insulated that it spills out a decent amount of toasty goodness anyway; UNFORTUNATELY the central boiler (serving at least 6 blocks of flats) is on the blink and the hot water is not, in fact, hot.

We had this problem over the weekend, too, and when I tried to report it as an emergency repair I was told by the estate management that "hot water is not an emergency." This is intriguing to me, because in civilised places such as New South Wales, it's one of the things you can get fixed and force the landlord to pay for regardless of their consent to repair. Given that estate management doesn't supply electricity or gas, and that the water supply itself is presumably handled by the five thousand deregulated water companies, I am a tad confused over what else might in fact be an emergency repair for which the estate is responsible. Godzilla attack? "Oh, no, we're only responsible for Mothra attacks, sorry."

On the plus side, since the hot water problem has now occurred conveniently within office hours, they are apparently trying to fix it as we speak. And in the meantime I have an excuse not to do the washing up. HURRAY.

And now to put on a padded jacket and do the grocery shopping.