Writing -- Baby Talk: The heat is on

The following article featured in a weekly column on parenting in the Women on Wednesday supplement of The Evening Echo, one of Ireland's leading regional daily newspapers. It appeared in the 27 October 2004 issue.

You don't realise how much you take things for granted until they're gone. Take hot water and central heating, for example. Our ancient boiler finally gave up the ghost about a fortnight ago. We inherited it when we moved into the house and it must have been about 20 years old then. No doubt it had led a full and active life in boiler terms, but the strain of modern living was just too much for it and one night it slipped away quietly to that giant boiler graveyard in the sky.

We knew we were going to have to replace it sooner rather than later, but new boilers are expensive, so whenever we considered biting the bullet and getting a new one those two very human traits, miserliness and procrastination, would conspire to dissuade us and we'd end up thinking "just one more winter". When it finally went there was no warning: I just got up one morning, turned on the shower and there was no hot water.

I went through the usual checks: the pilot light was lit, the power was on at the circuit breaker and everything else seemed fine. I called out the engineer who couldn't get to us until the next day. When he eventually arrived he spent about an hour performing the boiler equivalent of the last rites before he finally declared the old appliance defunct.

We have a "combination" or "combi" system, which means that there's no hot water tank and no immersion. The boiler heats the water on demand, which is great because you never run out, but it also means that there's no back-up system when your boiler heads the way of the dodo.

Why do these things never happen at convenient times? If the boiler had gone on strike mid-summer it would have been a lot less hassle all around. But no, it happened right at the start of the first really cold spell of the year! Another thing about this time of year is that you can't get a plumber/heating technician for diamonds. They're all out servicing other people's boilers. I rang one guy who quite seriously told me he'd be able to fit me in around Christmas time. By the time we'd managed to source the new boiler and get someone in to fit it we'd been without heating and hot water for about three weeks.

That's three weeks with no hot water, no heating and three young children. The girls were none too enamoured when it came to washing with a cold wet flannel in an even colder bathroom! Thank heavens we're good friends with our neighbours. Between trips to the local leisure club (on the pretext of having a swim, but really just to use the showers), calling to visiting friends with towels and shower-gel at the ready and popping next-door for a quick rinse we managed to keep ourselves and the girls pretty clean. We even resorted to boiled up huge pots of water on the cooker and ferrying them back-and-forth to fill the bath a few times. The girls thought it was all a great game.

The early mornings were the worst: the dark, the cold and not having a hot shower before sorting out breakfast for the three frozen little munchkins sitting shivering in their pyjamas. When you start the day off cold you never really warm up properly.

Now that the new boiler's in we're really appreciating the comfort and convenience that it provides. After three long, cold weeks it's great to have hot water at the flick of a wrist and heat on demand. Still, even after being deprived of these comforts for a while I don't suppose it will be long before we start take them for granted again.