This olde house

Do you remember that song and the video with shakin Stevens? well this ole house started to shake and play up over the holidays. Built in the 1930's it was one of the first to be occupied on the street. A lot of money has been spent to bring it up to date over the years, knocking two living rooms into one and later on an extension at the back ie bigger kitchen and new bedroom en suit for pat. Mum had even got someone in to re decorate some of the rooms in the house only last year to freshen it up and even got her french doors fitted witch looked amazing! but because Ted is old now and mum with i'll health it has been a little neglected in some areas. I could write a list of things but for now i'll just write about what happened.

One night before Christmas eve ted and i were in the living room, we were watching the news headlines of the big freeze that was on its way, i had just made a hot water bottle before going to bed but stayed up to get the weather update. Suddenly the gas fire went quiet, looking at it i said to ted have you switched the fire off? Ted looked down and said shit! i went to the kitchen to see if the boiler was working! seeing it flashing i pressed the button and it was ok! going back to switch the fire on again but couldn't the pilot light had gone and i didn't know how to do it. Ted went outside to check the gas meter (they have had a card meter for a couple of years) and there was over £40 in it. Phoning British gas to complain but Ted couldn't get through so tried another number and took him ages to get anywhere...

bloody machines telling me to press 1 press 3 press 1 after an hour he got through and begged for someone to call round in the morning! as there is a sick woman here and she must have heat!!!
Ted was put on hold until this woman answered, , i will send out a corgi engineer in the morning and he will put £10 emergency money in for you! but you will lose the money you had before. Well Ted wasn't happy with that! there's over £40 in it i want that money back! how are we to keep warm??
We got the fire working the following day and everything was back to normal until...
Boxing day when the overhead lights packed up. There was nothing we could do at this time of year so Ted asked his son to come over and put a new fuse in. Opening the cubboard he had a bit of a shock on the state of the fuse box, it was nearly hanging away from the wall and he was a bit scared to touch it but done it in the end. We have heat and light what else can go wrong?

The night after mum called me into the bedroom she could hear banging in the wall and it was driving her mad, listening in silence i could faintly hear it and tried to find out where it came from!..it was the gas meter the damn thing was sticking for some reason but there was nothing i could do.
Ted phones BG again to tell them about the meter going clonk clonk! all night can someone come round to look at it please? this Scottish guy took pity and would send someone round asap to fix the meter and also, I am sending a new card out as we speak and it will be with you in two days by courier. He gave an address to send the old card back and a number to phone to get his money back on the new card. In the mean time if you could wait for a corgi to arrive in two hours and i will phone you back at 7pm to check on things. Within an hour we had a new meter that didn't go clonk clonk! and emergency money until the card arrived and yes that Scottish guy did phone back as promised and by 10am two days later we got the card.

Everything was working again! up until after the new year when the meter wouldn't accept the money on the card. I had a go as well but it wouldn't take at all. We had a spanking brand new meter that was frozen! so back onto BG again! its snow joke now.. mum's blood is thin and needs heat. All engineers were busy and there was no-one in our area to fix it, couriers had stopped working because of the snow! we were cut off here big time. It took all day to get someone anyone just to give us warmth. After 8 hours with no heat the engineer called and put another £10 in but it only registered as £5 it wont last us the night. By 4am mum called out that the heating was off again. Poor Ted had to phone BG again. i made mum a hot water bottle and a cup of tea and made porridge to keep us warm. Later that morning Ted went out to buy a new heater and in that time the engineer called to fix things and said it would be better if you had quarterly meter put back in! but it cant be done till Monday for you. He said he would call back later to check on things.
I told mum this and with all the problems they had with the meter i made a snap decision to get someone in to fix a normal meter for Monday. They just don't need this hassle at their age, and i wont be here on Monday to help them as i hoped to be going back to Scotland to warm my cold and shivering flat.

Just a little note:
for those of you with pre payment cards, as of next year you will not get the £10 emergency money if things go wrong with your meter. It will go down to £8. That's not enough to keep warm for a day!