Ronan from Tom Sutton Heating visited today. He confirmed that we had taken all reasonable steps to reactivate our boiler, but that the capacitor needed replacing. He had ordered the part, which would not be delivered until Monday. He will fit it that evening
Ian, as already arranged, came to collect Flo, Dillon, and Ellie for a weekend at Southbourne. We will make use of their heater while they are away.
Now, on a bright, sunny, day with temperatures never rising above freezing where is the warmest place available to us? You have guessed it. The Modus.
We spent the early part of the afternoon unsuccessfully attempting to resuscitate the immersion heater, then took a ride in the car.
We needed to go no further than the largely icebound Hatchet Pond
where we stayed until just before the early sunset.
The pair of swans and their cygnets stayed on the edge of the lake.
Despite the sign set up by the Forestry Commission “Are you skating on thin ice?”, and the news of the deaths of four boys in Solihull succumbing to cardiac arrests from the shock of falling into icy water a few days ago,
one man, joined by a walker and a dog, skated up and down the Hatchet Moor section of the pond,
while a young family played on the shallows of the main body of water,
and a group of teenagers walked across it. Had the youngsters been here in the summer they would have been warned of the lethal currents in the depths of this pond.
A woman who remonstrated to no avail with the parents of the family, explained to us that her son was a fireman who had often been one who pulled dead bodies out of the water.
This evening we dined on the last of the left-overs. Jackie’s choice was the beef and the Bolognese, mine the curry.