My Boiler Needs Therapy

Olive, the oil fired domestic boiler (like I have an oil refinery on the premises) is a very needy girl. Before you comment on the naming of a device, let me just inform the ignorant, that from an engineering perspective, all machines & engines & electronic wizardry perform much better if they have the security of a name. Don't you pay attention if someone calls your name? Of course you'd get prickly if one were to scream 'you utterly useless, pointless piece of sh*t', but done with sufficient malevolence, volume & authority, you might consider doing what was asked of you. No more than that, & reluctantly, & if you could drop the screamer into the sh*t at the worst opportunity, you would. Same applies to machines. So Olive it is.

She has her own room, brick built & nice and cosy, now she's got to a certain age. She has a fridge freezer to converse with on the left side & a washing machine on the other. The service man tells me that she's emitting gases at rather a high temperature, as there are plates in the stack that aren't there anymore. But at least she'd fire up when the timer asked her. This is not the situation now.

Olive has taken to humming to herself when the potterton comes calling. Sometimes it's like a quiet buzz. Others it like a swarm of cold war bees being interrogated at 10kvolts. On these occasions one has to press her wee red button. Firmly though, or else she doesn't take any notice. And then sometimes she bursts into boiler magnificence. Not always though. On bad says she makes a noise like a civil aircraft coming down to land. I should know-Concorde used to set the car alarms off in the staff car park at Heathrow.

Things have moved onto another level. Increasingly I have to toddle out there at 5 o'clock in the morning & have words. She buzzes now invariably twice. And you have to time it right. Above all she demands a patient bedside manner. And so it is that my Olive, my old faithful boiler, has become codependent on me. It's always me, on the rare occasions the GF goes out to hold her hand she sulks & I'm told, can be heard to be rasping "Supermodel" at her, so naturally the GF doesn't go anywhere near her.

Mind you-the bloody washing machine always blocks up when I'm around. It never, ever does it to her. Come to think of it, it could be the case that the little Korean bastard has talked her round to his point of view.

At least the freezer remains neutral. Ah, hold on. It's brand new-the last one expired recently. Went on strike i.e. didn't turn up for work, didn't even show a light. Brilliant-I'm being held to moral ransome by a triumvirate of domestic appliances.

Looks like I need a counselling plumber. Where in the yellow pages does one find one of those?



(slightly inspired by BBC - BBC Radio 4 Programmes - Sarah Millican's Support Group, Episode 1 )