Bloody hell it's cold today. "So don't go outside Harry," I hear you cry. Well I'm not talking about outside. On Saturday our heating boiler stopped working. But not in a meek and mild way.

Oh dear me no.

The pilot light had gone out a couple of times, it seemed to work fine, yet when the heating came on it would snuff out the pilot. The second time I tried to relight the pilot light there was an almighty bang inches from my face. The boiler bulged as something went bang inside.

Scared me a bit I can tell you.

So we called Transco, fearing a gas leak or something. They told us to open all the windows, which wasn't a lot of fun on a cold Saturday evening. Anyway, the Transco engineer arrived and checked the system. Thankfully there was no gas leak, despite the acrid smell of burning that was given off when the boiler went bang.

So since then we've been without central heating and hot water. We couldn't contact our landlord because the flat is managed through an estate agent that didn't open until this morning. Thankfully they've contacted a heat engineer who'll be with us today, I just hope he's got the parts to fix our particular boiler.

We do have some heating, a gas fire in the lounge, but it doesn't really help heat the whole flat and we've both rather cold. I'm sat working in a room with no heat and it's very cold outside. And after two days without hot water I don't think you'd want to be downwind of me.

At least we have a small electric fan heater and thick duvets, but it's still been a very cold night and we're both very chilly this morning.

Update 14:02 The heating engineer has just visited. Seems the fan in our boiler is broken. He may be able to get the part today, otherwise we may have to wait until tomorrow - which means another freezing night.

Update 15:39 Right, now we have freezing fog. Which isn't so nice.