Jonny McCambridge: Like the old oil boiler, I take some time to warm up

The darkness is close to total and my wife and son are still asleep upstairs.

I go through my daily routine of turning things on – the heating, the news on the radio, my work computer and the coffee machine.

I sit down at the kitchen table as I hear the familiar sound of the bitter black liquid bubbling into the pot.

I’m feeling low; daunted perhaps by the ordeal of work and the bleakness of the news agenda – we are once again living in lockdown, schools are closed and there is uncertainty over food supplies in supermarkets.

But it is the cold which disturbs me the most. The latest icy spell has lasted for days and seems without end, each morning more bitter than the one which preceded it.

The remnants of a snowman are still in the front garden, now just a misshapen lump of rock-hard dirty ice.

I begin to try and organise the day. I think about breakfast but then remember there is no loaf. When I went to the shop last night the shelves were empty of bread.

I think about the ordeal of home-schooling. I’ve been down this road before and know that it doesn’t meander in a positive direction.

I look at the bundle of schoolwork which has been sent home.

I fight off a familiar spasm of despair as I wonder how it is possible to balance this with the responsibilities of work.

I know from the class WhatsApp group how much progress all the other parents are making, and I fear how far both my son and I are falling behind.

I think about the next day’s paper, in particular about the duty of a journalist to bring some balance to the news offering, to give readers something to smile about.

I look through emails, websites and social media, but it is a blanket of misery.

I sit there shivering. Then I realise that something is not right. The house is freezing.

I put my hand on the radiator; it is without warmth.

I curse under my breath and go to the back door.

The yard is covered in hard, crushed snow, a ubiquitous, glistening spider’s web of frost.

I force my bare feet into an old pair of shoes and grab a torch. Slowly I work my way across the paving stones. Several times I almost slide and have to fight to remain upright.

I get to the little brick shed which houses the oil burner and fiercely grab hold of the wall which runs alongside it. I haunch down, turn on the torch and open the door to reveal the workings within.

There is mystery as to why I do this. I know nothing about boilers. If there is anything wrong with it, the chances of me being able to identify, let along fix it, are remote. Perhaps I just feel that it is my allotted role as a man to go through the motions.

I have history with this oil burner. It has broken down several times. I have been told by all the engineers who have inspected it that it needs to be replaced. But, cowed by the cost of purchasing a new heating system, I keep getting it patched up. ‘We’ll get one more winter out of it.’

Now I peer at it in the half light. I can see frost on the surface of the boiler. It is making a noise, which I take to be a good sign.

There is a pattern. It seems to burn for a few seconds before it stops. This is repeated several times. Eventually, as the frost around the shield begins to melt, the noisy spells last longer and the silences are shorter. After about fifteen minutes it is burning continually without interruption. I am left with the impression that the old boiler had to thaw out before it would work properly.

I go back inside. There is now some heat coming through the radiators. I feel a sense of achievement, as if I have fixed the boiler, rather than just stared at it.

It is later in the morning and the house is warm. The hot coffee has restored something within me. Some of my work colleagues are now logged into their computers and we share virtual morning greetings and jokes.

The ordeal of labour seems not so tall when there are others to share it with. There is a sense that we are in it together. We have a productive conference and a few ideas are knocked around. There are even a couple of stories which make me smile.

My wife and son are up now also. I put together a batter and make pancakes and smoothies with strawberries and blueberries I find at the back of the fridge. I peel and slice an apple for my boy and he feigns outrage when he finds a bit of flesh with a tiny particle of skin remaining.

The three of us make a plan that we’ll get our daily quota of exercise at lunch by going for a walk around the lake and maybe even buy something nice for dinner. My son asks if he can have an ice cream on the walk. I tell him he can if he does some school work today.

Then I return to my desk at the kitchen table, where I have spent countless hours in the last year and I watch while tomorrow’s paper begins to take shape in the screen in front of me.

I have been through this same routine thousands of times over many years, but I still experience the same small ripple of creative excitement.

Then, for some reason, I think again about the old oil boiler. How it seemed dead and defective, how it stuttered and spluttered reluctantly to life. And how, once it was warmed up, it was just fine.

: The day after I wrote this column my heating system stopped working completely. I called an engineer. He took one look at it and told me it was ‘completely knackered’.

* Jonny McCambridge’s new book Afraid of the Dark, published by Dalzell Press, is available now on Amazon.

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