Still cold

Three days now with no heating and last night was the coldest of the winter so far. I hope the engineer will come today. My neck and shoulders are very tense (this happens when I get cold) and my knees ache. I want to wash my hair, but we have no hot water. I boiled a kettle to wash dishes yesterday, but that won't work for hair washing.

Came downstairs this morning to find a card from the post office by the front door: "We tried to deliver a package but it would not fit through your letter box". They LIE - no-one knocked on the door to try to deliver any such package - Bex and I were both here, and surely one of us would have heard the doorknocker. This now means that one of us will have to go to the depot (a 20-minute bus ride away) to pick up this package (and hope it is not huge and heavy). there are so-called alternatives: you can try to arrange a redelivery, either by phone or by going to the website. However, this does not work. The online bookings are clearly not checked very often, as you only get an acknowledgement of your booking AFTER the date you have specified for redelivery and AFTER you have taken time off work to wait in for a redelivery that has not happened because the online booking was not logged in time. The phone line has an irritatingly cheerful automated reply which takes a long time to tell you that the best way of getting your package is to collect it from the depot or make an online booking for a redelivery(!). If you are determined, and go through the "please press x.." rigmarole several times to try to speak to a real person, you are finally put through to a line at the depot which is engaged. When you try again (you have to go through the "please press.." exercise again, of course), the depot phone rings for 20 minutes (possibly longer - after 20 minutes, you have had enough). Has the person who was clearly speaking to someone else on the phone when you rang the first time left the building? Is there no one else who could answer the phone? Are you in a queuing system? There is no way of knowing. This is incredibly frustrating, and despite knowing all this, I still tried phoning the depot.


A couple of hours later, a postperson did knock, with two small packages. We are expecting several more packages, so the problem now is, was this morning's failed delivery actually redelivered without us asking, or was this later delivery a completely separate delivery? Do we still need to go to the depot to pick up the first one? The postperson just handed me the the packages and dashed off (not responding to my forlorn call of "er -- excuse me......" ). Maybe I was too slow off the mark, or maybe she didn't hear me). Of course, we can't phone the depot to enquire........