It is cold right now in Brussels. Very cold. And foggy. All in all, not an ideal time for your boiler to break down: cold bedrooms and no hot water. I called the landlord – he suggested we go to the basement and press the button on the left. I said I had done that. He said he didn’t know what else we could do (to be fair to him, he set about calling a heating person but nothing had happened by the time we went to bed).
The weird thing was that none of our neighbours seemed to notice, even though the boiler serves the whole building so we were all affected.
Neighbour A is a DIY enthusiast and we tried to enlist him to help – it was news to him that there was a problem. Clearly he doesnÂ’’t feel the cold.
Neighbour B seemed quite indifferent – another reptile ? Oddly, he seemed to feel it was up to us to sort it out: “Haven’Â’t you got the landlordÂ’s number ?”
This morning when the heating guy finally rang, he wanted to know when somebody could let him in. Since we both work, we tried to enlist Neighbour C who works unusual hours. We knocked on her door before going to work. By definition, she had not had heating or hot water all night. Her reaction: “I heard you outside and I was going to ask whatÂ’’s happening.” We got the impression of a whole building full of adults waiting for the Waffle family to sort out their heating for them.
Mr Waflle suggests they’Â’re all youngest children. This, with apologies to the publishing exec, is because in his family the youngest child is regarded as mildly feckless. She was once described by a family member as “very brilliant you know, but she spends a lot of her time in this world looking for her other shoe”. In my family the youngest child is regarded as immensely responsible, far more so than, say, me. I think that our neighbours may all be eldest children.
on 16 December 2004 at 22:51
It does sound a little like your place pog, but I suppose at least we have a landlord to whine to… 
