Well, yesterday was a waste of time.

The decorator came in the morning and sorted out the plastering with a promise to come back either in the evening or today. However, the roofer didn't turn up until this morning and that's another story.

The gasman turned up and while he was great he couldn't find the problem. All we know is that the fuse had gone. He tested different things and nothing seemed to be causing the problem. He finally left just after six having booked in an appointment with us tomorrow and ordered a new circuit board. The board alone would have cost almost £200 and with the gasman's time we would have been looking at a fortune for this work. Thank God we got British Gas Homecare. At something like £25 a month it'll be at least 8 months before we've paid for this work.

So Rat's at home this morning waiting for people to turn up. The roofer arrived and managed to break the guttering and has done some form of temporary fix - until I get home I won't know exactly how bad, and until it rains heavily we won't know the real extent of the damage. They then discovered it would be a bigger job than expected and have to get the okay from the insurance company. I've phoned the insurance company and they are waiting for a change to the schedule of work to be completed. They've flagged it up to check later. Hopefully they can okay it soon so that they can come back and do the work tomorrow. After that we'd have to start booking more time off and with the rain we've been having we want it done asap.

I've just heard from Rat that the circuit board that had been ordered for the boiler is the wrong one. This isn't surprising considering the circuit board looked nothing like either the instructions that British Gas supplied nor the instructions in the manual that was left to us by the previous owners of the house. However, he's been on the phone to the manufacturer and there may be a simple fix to the problem. I'm waiting to hear back so watch this space.

So all in all things aren't going too well. It's great that we aren't having to pay gigantic sums of money for the work to be done. And it's kinda good that we have some comeback if anything goes wrong. But nothings fixed like it should be and so we still have a cold house and leaking roof. It's almost as bad as waiting for landlords and agencies. And far more stressful.