My Soviet Life

The fucking piece of shit boiler packed up once again. It was all too too Soviet for words.  I had to lug buckets of coal and we had to wash in the sink with flannels and kettlefuls of hot water (well, the children did, I drove to the very expensive gym I pay a fortune not to go to every month, which made me feel virtuous and healthy, even though I'd only had a shower).

I had to ring for a Little Man to fix it, because I am afraid of the boiler and fear tampering with it will cause it to explode and leave a smoking crater where my house used to be, which would be a dreadful waste of all my adorable Laura Ashley cushions.  The DC is also afraid of the boiler, I can tell, because as soon as it breaks down he sanctions calling in a Little Man, instead of insisting on trying to fix it himself first, and only giving in and calling the Little Man when he has broken it good and proper, before running away and hiding and leaving me to lie to the Little Man that it was like that when I found it, and I don't know what happened to it, which is what usually happens when things break.

So I rang the call centre and did the usual dance of being left on hold for three hours while a woman with a voice that was clearly supposed to be calming, but instead made me want to punch her repeatedly in the face, assured me how important my call was to them, before the fucktard on the other end insisted that there was absolutely no way he could give me any sort of idea when the engineer might arrive, other than 'before 5.30'. 

Now I try to be nice to people in call centres, I really really do, I realise that sitting in a soulless beige box wearing a nasty plastic headset, having your soul slowly crushed to death while angry middleclass women shriek "We put a fucking man on the moon, HOW can you not give me any idea whether the Little Man will be here in the morning or afternoon, WHAT AM I GOING TO DO ABOUT THE SCHOOL RUN???????" at you, probably isn't anyone's dream job.

Despite my best efforts to remember the soul crushing and the germ infested head sets and be pleasant and courteous, occasionally I am faced with a total dickhead whose only power over anyone is not telling me when the fucking engineer is going to arrive and my God the little bastard is going to milk every ounce of enjoyment from it that he can.  So, having pleaded, begged, sobbed and threatened, I gave in and accepted that the engineer would be here at some time before 5.30pm.  And thus the Terror and I sat down to wait.  Well, I sat down. 

The Terror insisted on doing a credible impression of The Wall of Death around the sitting room before I tired of his antics and kicked him outside, where he searched in vain for something to tear limb from limb.  Alas, his scorched earth policy with regard to the local wildlife has rather back fired, news of his murderous ways have spread and not a cat nor a rabbit nor a pheasant dares venture into the garden anymore.  Even the starlings have departed for safer shores.

Finding nothing to kill, he came in to demand walkies to fresh pastures where there are new things to kill, but I was still sitting slumped in my chilly Soviet despair, unable to leave the house, yet gripped by a strong desire to don an unflattering headscarf and trudge somewhere to queue for bread and beetroot, and search for black market vodka.  I expected Dr Zhivago to burst in at any moment and berate me for letting the fire go out, and then I would weep there was no coal and he would run off with a blonde binty and leave me in the snow, all alone, all alone, poor me, with only my beetroots and vodka to comfort me. 

I was so deep in my world of Soviet gloom, that I toyed with opening the emergency Smirnoff to add some authenticity, but luckily I remembered in time what had happened when Maddy accidently got plastered whilst waiting for an engineer to come and fix something (she had only meant to have a little drinky to cheer herself up about the water pouring through her sitting room ceiling, but it was so nice she had another.  And another.  Then flung open the door filled with extravagant bonhomie, shouted "Hurrah, fix my house my good man" then had a total breakdown when he told her he would have to come back tomorrow with 'parts' to complete the fixings.  Her husband arrived home to find Maddy sobbing uncontrollably at the kitchen table while the utterly terrified engineer mumbled 'there there' and Damien and Angelica dismantled the television to 'see if he could fix THAT').

Instead of opening the vodka, I Sovieted the Terror, adorning him with a suitable headscarf, which he tore off and ate, which seemed to cheer him up.  And so we continued to wait.