WARMED BY THE COLD
As the fridge-freezer engineer told me my 1950s, silver retro-Smeg was in rude health, my heart warmed. It may have cost me 80 smackers to get him to come over, but offset against the £900 the behemoth sitting in my open-plan living room cost, it's money well-spent.

I slept soundly after that. Soundly, that is, until a storm hit northwest London at 2.30pm with such ferocity that I feared my flat would flood.

So much rain descended from the heavens - it was like a vomiting drunk who, thinking that the puke issuing from his gut will remain at a consistently unpleasant pace, suddenly unleashes yet another torrent, far thicker and even more powerful than the one that precededd it. It just didn't stop.

By the time I woke up, though, two hours later, the sun was baking the faux-brown leather blinds that shield my bedroom. My washing from Tuesday still clings to the line on my terrace. But I just can't be arsed to bring it in. It'll hold.