The fun started on Christmas Eve. We woke up to a cold house, to discover the boiler had packed up and taken annual leave for the festive season. Perfect.

Having regaled our tales of woe to friends and colleagues, it seems we are far from the only household to suffer from Christmas boiler fatigue - nearly everyone I've spoken to seems to have suffered similarly at some point in the past. It's as if the blasted things know So, what to do?

Aside from a boiled kettle's worth of hot water for a cold and brief "shower", the only thing we could really do was bide our time.

That close to Christmas, calling out a plumber was prohibitively expensive (some of them won't get out of bed for less than £120 an hour you know), so we just had to wait.

And wait we did. And wait. After several trips to friends' houses (and one particularly embarrassing foray next-door on Christmas Day - our poor neighbour's eight-year-old had to put up with the weirdos from next-door traipsing through her piles of presents at 10am), it was starting to get a little boring.

At first I'll admit it seemed like a bit of an adventure.

With a log fire in the front room, heating wasn't really a problem, so it was just the lack of hot water that presented a challenge.

And boiling the kettle, lathering up the sponge, scrubbing as quickly as possible and then standing under the cascade from a jug was a little reminiscent of camping holidays I've taken and thus could almost be described as fun.

But not any more. Project "get it fixed" is under way, but the novelty has worn off, and we are both sick of only having two warm rooms in the house (front room as mentioned, and the bedroom with the little plug-in radiator caning the electricity) - diving between them at great speed to finish whichever chore involves being out of the warmth in record time.

One saving grace has been the local swimming pool - just a few minutes down the road and open early in the mornings. Thank goodness for public facilities, and their lovely warm showers!!

And of course having to use the pool first also means that I'm losing some of the festive fat I've gained - although I could do with holding on to that for warmth...