The boiler is knackered. It decides for itself when to come on (which in fairness does mark it out as more consciously intelligent than most boilers) and, just as crucially, when to go off. I can’t speak for everyone, but I think it’s safe to say that when it comes to this time of year I’d rather have a boiler that’s on than one that’s off. And what is more I’d absolutely prefer a boiler that did what the goddamn hell it was told and just worked when it needs to work and minds its own business the rest of the time. I’d also like to say that it’s my first stint of boiler trouble, but it isn’t. In almost every property I’ve lived in since leaving home for the first time there has been some sort of ongoing problem with the hot water or the heating, and since we no longer live in an age where bathtubs are filled from an iron kettle and we sleep in the same room as our cattle I feel that something should be done about it. Surely we’ve come far enough by now?
A few long years ago I was present when a couple of chaps turned up to replace a boiler. What should have taken a few hours (so they said) turned out to take all day and most of the night (I can almost see how The Kinks must’ve felt), though it didn’t help that they turned up three hours later than planned and then spent half the afternoon popping out to a variety of hardware stores for extra bits they hadn’t thought of or, slightly less productively, for more fried chicken. At one point I began to wonder if this was the first time they had ever installed a boiler, and at another point a bit later on I began to wonder if they had ever seen a boiler at all. By the time they left that night it still didn’t work. Perhaps even worse, a few years before that I had a boiler that was at such a dilapidated stage of old age and fuddled copper dementia that it took a totally random length of time just to kick itself into action. You would pull down the flap and press a button and then it would start ticking away as if it had some plumbing variation of a deep-seated stammer and then you’d just have to cross your fingers and hope that the 50/50 chance of it finally producing some heat would play out in your favour. I was visited by quite a few boiler ‘experts’ but the only solution they could suggest was the only one that I couldn’t afford, which was a new boiler. Eventually I decided to take the easiest path to a better state of central heating wellbeing and just sold the flat instead. Boiler and all.
But an old boiler never forgets (or so they say) and so I am resigned to the sharpening reality that having a reliable and fully functioning, fickle free source of gas heating will just be something that happens to other people. I also have to remember that when it comes to shit going wrong with domestic appliances it very rarely happens in isolation. To make the boiler feel a little happier there is also a smoke alarm that keeps going off when the bathroom door is left open after a shower. Nothing about this is good because the alarm seems to make the sound of a thousand pterodactyls on fire (fittingly enough). On top of this the alarm is on the ceiling and just out of reach without the help of a chair to stand on and because of its specific disability only goes off when I am fresh out of the shower and as naked as the day I was born (control yourself) so turning it off in a hurry is proving to be a singularly undignified exercise. I hope that one day, once we’ve nailed driverless cars and have mastered teleportation that someone will invent a smoke alarm that works like Alexa and responds immediately to simply being told to shut the fuck up. You have to have a dream to get someone else to make your dream come true.
It doesn’t stop there, because we all know that such annoyances tend to come in threes and so the washing machine has also decided to commit ritual harakiri in the corner of the kitchen. I wouldn’t have minded so much if it had let me know the gravity of its intentions, but it wasn’t anywhere near as polite enough to oblige me in such a manner. Instead, the selfish little bugger just stopped working altogether while I was out and this meant there were no flashing lights and no frantic bleeps to warn me, so when I opened the door to take out the washing I was promptly greeted by what appeared to be 90% of all the water on the planet smoothly decanting itself onto the floor. It took approximately one hundred towels to mop up the mess and then all of those needed to be wrung out by hand, along with the clean washing left in the drum. It did dawn on me briefly that I could have just worked out the problem, popped them back in the machine and put them on a spin, but since I sometimes struggle to work a door handle the chances of me translating and reversing the suicidal intentions of any sort of white good are far beyond my tiny brain. At least it was a Saturday afternoon so once things had settled a bit I could console myself with some strictly legal relaxants.
There are lots of reasons why we shouldn’t be putting rockets into space. Some are financial, some are practical and some are environmental, and almost all of those reasons are valid and sensible. But the best reason to not waste so much time and money on space travel and the technology necessary to make it happen is that how can we possibly expect it to work if we can’t even design household appliances that operate properly every day and then continue to operate properly until we decide we want a new one anyway? How is it that we can perform keyhole surgery to alleviate a clogged colon and yet we can’t create a smoke alarm that recognises the difference between smoke and steam? How have we worked out how to safely remove a tumour the size of a bedside cabinet from the brain of a conscious human but we can’t find a fool-proof way of stopping a washing machine from turning a kitchen into a tidal estuary? And how have we developed technology that means we can watch someone burgle our homes via an app on our smartphones or perform a perfectly satisfying 69 with a robot but still not be 100% sure that when we ask the boiler to heat something up it won’t just flick us the finger or explode in our faces? It would be easy to call it karma, but that doesn’t always fit. Instead, it’s just that most of the time almost all of us haven’t got a fucking clue what we’re doing – so why should the machines we make be any less flawed than the people who make them? It’s enough to make one a little miffed. And it’s winter. And it’s cold. And I can’t remember the last time I got a solid night’s sleep. Maybe I’m not working properly either. I suppose that, at least, is to be expected.
G B Burton. 28.11.2023
On stupidity......and other causes for concern. 