Which makes you wonder why we had decided to have a new boiler fitted… at the coldest time of year. All sorts of nonsense went on in terms of deciding what was the right piping, how many wires were needed, whether we needed to run a new wire to the airing cupboard upstairs, ordering the right boiler, the wrong one being delivered and so on. But after two days we had heating… and the central heating is much quieter :-). We also managed to get the electric immersion sorted out. The new boiler is supposed to be cheaper to run as well…. which would be nice!

The new boiler turned out to be bigger than the previous boiler, not that Calor ever explained to me that we wouldn’t be able to put the original cupboard back up. Grrrr….. which then meant that we had to have Roy in to do a new cupboard… Here is the before and after.

Nikki has been in La Plagne in France for the last week or so, preparing for her debut as a driver in a World Cup Race. A daunting prospect as she was ranked below everyone else in the race… Nikki was ranked 24th before the race, and all other 15 drivers were above her. So she came 16th, but drove well. She was a bit disappointed, she had driven better in the last practice runs. But is still all good development.

Here are a couple of pictures Tricia took from the live feed.

Last weekend Tricia and I were at a local Burns night in the village hall. Tricia got roped in to helping with a lot of the food prep… and I got asked to do the Toast to the Lassies. Ellie was working in the kitchen… so a proper family effort. Elizabth, our next door neighbour did the reply to my toast on behalf of the lasses. It was a good evening, the meal and haggis were good, and I got out of doing any Scottish dancing at the end. Result. Here we have Peter, the main organiser killing the haggis, and myself attempting to toast the lasses, and Elizabeth.

The week just gone contained a trip to the dentist for me, a filling :-(… this was more of a replacement, drilling out an old one and replacing it. It also contained some good news about my job. I was put ‘at risk’ of redundancy in October. This was then confirmed in December when I was given 3 months notice. There were however some new jobs as part of the restructure, and I was able to apply for one, and fortunately get one… all confirmed this week, so I get to stay at BP for a while longer. Something of a relief. One of my good friends at BP, Peter (not the haggis killer), was in Harefield for a heart op this week. He has had a valve replacement, all the news so far is that he is doing well.

Saturday evening we had the January safari supper. The theme was the TV progs, Dallas and Dynasty… or ‘Dallasty’ as we called it. A terrific evening, good food, company and a few drinks. Here is Tricia and me at the start of the evening, and our good friend Clive ding his Blake Carrington impersonation.

Two visits to the gym this weekend for Tricia me and Ellie… On Saturday Tricia and I used a frame that works your abs and core… I ached this morning, and then went and repeated it all this morning. So I should wake up with one of those six pack things tomorrow morning :-). Ellie did a reading in church this morning. Robbie was off killing people with yellow pellets at Airsoft today. He came back cold and tired!

Oh well, another week beckons. I had better go and get some sleep.