The Window Shatters

I'm  not talking about a literal window. I'm talking about the "window" of time set aside for the boiler repair guy to show up yesterday. It was supposed to be a simple day: boiler repair in the morning, a quick trip to the post office to mail Dave's passport documents, get to work around lunchtime.

Instead, I waited all morning from 8 a.m. to noon, when the repair window expired. No boiler guy. I called British Gas and was assured that although he was on a "longer than usual" call he would arrive by 1 p.m. I called again at 2 p.m. and was assured that he really was on the way this time. He finally showed up at 3:45, grousing about how terrible his day had been. No doubt he and my boss, who was all alone in the library, could have shared their perspectives about that.

On the plus side, I was able to get a lot of reading done. But sitting around waiting for a repairman isn't relaxing or enjoyable. You're constantly aware of your phone, aware of the door, and you can't go anywhere -- not to the store or, ahem, the post office. I was even afraid to go out in the garden for fear of missing his knock. It's like house arrest. (Or like I imagine house arrest to be!)

He did finally get the boiler repaired, but then the comedy of errors took an unexpected turn when we discovered we had no water! The taps were bone-dry. This is a problem because we were unable to test the newly repaired boiler. I went out in the street and found Thames Water on the next block, repairing a broken water main. The water would be out for about three hours, they said.

So the repair guy left and Dave and I hoped for the best when we turned on the boiler later. We're getting hot water, thank God, but there was a lot of scary banging in the system because of air in the pipes, and now the valve that lets us top up the water levels in the boiler doesn't seem to be working. ARGH!

And of course I have to go through all this again tomorrow, when the drains guy is coming.

Have you heard about Nigel Farage's latest crazy plan, to do away with Indefinite Leave to Remain? IRL is an immigration classification for people who want to remain in Britain to work or for some other purpose. Dave and I, for example, were required to apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain when our initial work visas could no longer be renewed -- as I recall, four or five years into our residence in the UK. It's actually quite a demanding step, in which we had to pass an exam on British history, culture and politics -- but afterwards we were permitted to stay as long as we wanted, before we ultimately applied for and received citizenship.

Now Farage wants to put people on visas indefinitely, rather than granting IRL. This would be a tremendous hardship for our school and many of the teachers there. I know people who have IRL but not citizenship -- in some cases people who have lived in the UK for decades -- and asking them to submit regular visa renewals forever seems absurd. Failing to submit or receive a renewal would lead to deportation.

According to The Guardian, these renewals would come "with stringent salary and English language requirements and tougher rules around bringing dependents...(Farage) left open the possibility that families in the UK could be broken up and that Ukrainians and Hongkongers who moved here using special resettlement routes could have their rights to remain revoked."

Ah, dystopia. Coming to theaters everywhere, including one near you!

(Photos: Islington on Sunday, and the Hebe in front of our flat in full bloom. This is one of the plants that Mrs. Russia had trimmed to within an inch of its life, and wanted to remove entirely. Fortunately we prevented that!)