Destroy It Yourself

I have no qualms with admitting that while I’ve been blessed with reasonable intelligence from my generous parents, this advantage is nicely counter-balanced by the fact that I’ve been denied a fair amount of common sense.

This particular handicap is something of a burden in day-to-day activities such as crossing roads or making a good first impression, but it doesn’t usually result any serious harm. However, when faced with a world of DIY, I can’t deny my loved ones the right to feel a little anxious.

One such situation arose two weeks ago when Suz and I were faced with resetting the boiler in our new flat. The sensible option would of course have been to wait until we could find a knight in shining armour who was up to the task, but a combination of feminism and the horrifying prospect of going out in public with greasy hair lead us courageously into battle with the house’s electrical circuits.

After a good 20 minutes of stabbing various buttons, as directed by a set of instructions which might as well have been written in hieroglyphics, there was still no sign of life from inside the boiler’s impenetrable exterior. So, after deciding that it probably wasn’t “just really quiet”, we opted for the traditional remedy of leaving it alone for half an hour to see if that did the trick.

When that sure-fire plan didn’t work, we decided this really was a job for the professionals and phoned the helpline who were of course helpfully unavailable due to the fact that it was 5pm on a Sunday.

15 minutes later, fuelled by sheer panic at the idea of a cold shower at 6am, the scene was a little less rational and a little more dangerous. I was sprawled horizontally with my back on the freezing cold kitchen surface and my head in the underside of the boiler, about to flip a red switch labelled ‘Loop valve’ – while Suz had located two screwdrivers and was reading a warning which said TURN OFF ALL ELECTRICAL ACTIVITY BEFORE DISMATLING THE BOILER COVER. It was during this scene of chaos that I had a glorious brainwave, left Suz debating whether to loosen the first screw, and began my hunt for the fuse box.

After flipping a number of switches to a less than productive end, I slumped back to the kitchen but hesitated just outside the door. On the wall, to the right of the light switch was a square box the size of a placemat. In the centre of this was a circular rotating dial, to the left was a list of descending numbers and at the top was a label which read ‘Thermostat’.