Hot, hotter, boiling.

Hello, lovelies. We all have basic human needs, that currently are incredibly easy to meet. For the most part, food is easily accessible. Even with Covid and Brexit. In England, we still access to free health care, and I really hope that it stays that way. Education isn’t a luxury, but free to all children. So what could happen that could disturb this equilibrium? Is there anything that could go wrong or break down leaving us alone and cold in the dark? Are we at the helm of our own ship? Or could that one catastrophe hit us and we’re going down without a lifeboat? With the year we’ve been having, the last thing I needed was for my ancient boiler to break down. No, not break down, I mean die with no hope for resurrection. And to top it off, it died on the day that we had snow. Beautiful but cold snow. Snow that everyone was enjoying, happened to be one of the scariest things to happen to my family. How could I keep my children warm on the coldest night of the year? So, after a few sleepless nights of sleeping under every blanket I own, and a whole lot of phone calls, I signed myself up for 30 months of my hard-earned money being handed over in place of a brand-new boiler. I think that this finally makes me an adult. And what could go wrong? Nothing, right? How wrong I was. I remember, when I was a young child, waking up in my toastie warm bed, but being able to see my breath. Long streams of warm air leaving my body and disappearing into my ice box of a bedroom. Having to make that mad dash to the radiator to grab my clothes, then dash back to my bed, so that I could get dressed under the covers. My childhood home had beautiful sash windows and very little central heating. Partially because my home was ridiculously under insulated. And mostly because my mother struggled to pay the heating bills, so we never really turned the heating on. ‘Wear another jumper.’ Was her answer to my protestations of being cold. Which is something I still do to this day. So as a mother, I have always tried to maintain a warm safe home. Which I had done, even against some pretty horrific odds, right up until the day of the snow. My three children and I all huddled around a small heater in the living room. Wrapping ourselves up in blankets and coats. I’m sure that one day we will look back at that and laugh, but at the time we were so cold that there was definitely no laughing at all. Was my problem that I had taken my boiler for granted? Why hadn’t I stashed a couple of thousand pounds away for a rainy day? How could I be so under prepared for a disaster like this to happen? Am I the only person not in a place to handle a situation like this? And what can I do to make sure that I never find myself in a spot like this again? I, like many others, have convinced myself that I needn’t worry about what may happen in the future, as I am too busy trying to deal with today. I have let go of worrying about…. Well… everything and am just trying to live my best life today. Life is so hard and depressing that the thoughts of putting any money away into a savings account is just a pipe dream. How can I shield against the future when the present is so uncertain? And that is my biggest mistake. I am not a massive shopaholic, but I don’t always think and plan before I make any purchases. I love all the shiny new things that shops have to offer, but I don’t actually need any of them. I have filled my fridge and freezer full of food, but I don’t ever have a plan with that to do with it all. My wardrobe has so many beautiful items in it, but I never wear half of them. I have so many lovely and practical things to ward off feelings of guilt, shame and anger in my life. But nothing that could help me out in a time of real need. I have a new boiler now, which is lovely. It doesn’t work, but its there. I’ve had 4 different engineers out to find the fault with my brand-new boiler in the past two weeks, and each of them have stated the problem is something new and different. But it all boils down to the fact that no one knows why my brand-new boiler doesn’t work at all. Such fun. I could let it get to me. I could feel my stress and temperature rising. But what I do know that I never want to find myself in this situation again. There is nothing so important that is going to stop me from putting some money aside. No new shiny toy is worth the stress of not having the funds to pay for a repair or an unexpected bill.