Kerry Buckley What’s the simplest thing that could possibly go wrong?

Clocks are back. I don’t particularly like changing them twice a year, but it’s better than the crackpot plan of sticking to UTC+1 all year round. I’m not prepared to accept the idea of it never being GMT in Greenwich – if we want to do everything an hour earlier that’s fine, but surely we can get used to a notional 8–4 working day instead of 9–5, without having to fool ourselves into it by setting all the clocks to the wrong time?

I realise I’m a stopped clock on this, but I’m right twice a year. And the rest of the year.

I was glad to be working at home on Monday after Sunday’s efforts. Weirdly, it was my back that gave me the most trouble – it had already been a bit dodgy, but every time I shifted slightly in bed it woke me up with an agonising spasm. My legs were also pretty sore, especially my right knee, but they (and to some extent my back) seemed to have sorted themselves out by Tuesday.

After Wednesday’s track session Dave, Neil and I headed to the Cricketers, as is traditional. I ordered food and a pint, and Dave two pints (just the usual Stella shandy for Neil!), and as is also traditional someone came over to tell us that the beer we’d both ordered was off. We upgraded to Jaipur for no extra cost, then for some reason they brought over five pints instead of three! That worked out at about £1.20 a pint, which was a bargain even by Wetherspoons standards.

Cross-country season kicked off on Sunday, with the opening round at Framlingham Castle. It seemed even busier than normal, with everyone packed like sardines on the start line, a washing-machine-like lap of the field before heading onto the course proper, and more-or-less single-file running for most of the course. That (and a false alarm untied shoelace that turned out to just be a bit of vegetation stuck to my foot) is my excuse for a slowish time, anyway.

Not a lot going on this week, as far as I can remember. Various bits of running, obviously, culminating in the annual club social One Lap to Ultra event on Sunday, This basically involves running round a 4.5 mile loop as many times as you can (or want to) in six hours, stopping each time for cake etc. I just about managed seven laps again, mostly with Holly and Maria (until they called it a day after lap five) and the odd other person joining us here and there. The last lap was solo, with me being the last to finish, behind Ryan who was a lap ahead of me. He took the glory of completing the most laps, which is doubly impressive given that he’d only ever run about half that distance previously.

Christmas cakes made! I’m wondering whether to try making a pudding as well this year, but if so I won’t be following Delia Smith’s stupid recipe that took about 24 hours of cooking last time I tried it.

Thanks to a combination of tight customer finances and Oli the recently-graduated former apprentice wanting to try working in a variety of teams, I’m now back to being solo on the project at work. I feel like I might struggle to keep output up to 50% of where it was with the two of us, even though for the majority his time on the team he was only working three days a week and studying the other two!

Our head coach, Ian, had his 60th birthday on Tuesday, and various club members, including his wife, conspired to organise a surprise party after the training session. I think we all managed to keep him in the dark pretty much until we “happened” to regroup near the venue during the jog back to the sports centre after our efforts on the prom.

After last week’s pitiful running mileage, I managed to up it a bit this week, including running to (slightly quicker than I’d have liked, to make in time to shower before my 9am meeting) and from (much more slowly, but almost twice as far) work on Wednesday. Along with running for coffee on Friday, parkrun (slowly) on Saturday and the Capel 5 on Sunday, I managed to go from my lowest mileage since 2022 (13.6) by jumping up to the highest total since the end of my marathon training at the beginning of this year (42.4).

I arrived at work on Thursday pleased that, despite running in instead of cycling the previous day, I still had my pass card and the right keys with me. I got changed, and wandered across to the office (about a two-minute walk). On reaching my desk, I realised that I didn’t have my laptop in my bag, because I’d left it in my locker overnight and forgot to pick it up. I put my bag down and walked back to the changing room, only to realise that my locker keys were in the bag. Walked back to the office to get the keys, back to the changing room to get the laptop, and back to the office, where I finally managed to start work. And I’d been kind of late in the first place.

I had a visit the other day from a man from the council saying they’re going to resurface the pavement outside my house later in the year, and that I needed to clear any vegetation that encroached on the path. I spend a few hours on Saturday afternoon hacking, digging, pulling and strimming at the ivy that’s slowly taking over, and now you can actually see the retaining wall again. I do need to also tackle the even bigger ivy that’s colonising the mostly-out-of-sight north wall of the house at some point too (along with the actual garden, of course).

Two ’spoons visits at the weekend, for second breakfast after parkrun, then back for food and (a little too much) drink on Sunday evening.

So the big news is that, after 2½ months with no hot water, on Tuesday a man came and fitted a Worcester Bosch Greenstar 4000, and when I got home from the evening’s training session I was able to have a shower with warm water! It’s quite pleasant, as it turns out, and I suspect it might catch on.

Obviously it’s much better than the old one ever was, even at its best, and will no doubt cost much less to run, making a mockery of my attempts to drag every drop of life out of the old inefficient one. Also I can now control the heating from my phone, like one of those modern people.

Just for fun, I trawled back through my old Facebook posts to unearth the history of keeping the old 28CDi mostly working for about a decade after it should have been put out of its misery …

• February 2015 (I know because it’s the third-from last stub in my last-ever cheque book): had the boiler serviced, and was told it was pretty much on its last legs and I’d soon need to think about replacing it. Decided to stop having it serviced instead.

• April 2015: replaced the fan, which had seized up and no longer triggered the pressure switch that allowed the boiler to light.

• May 2016: “I think I’m going to have to get a new boiler soon.”

• April 2017: flushed out the heat exchanger. “Let’s hope that ekes another couple of years out of it before it finally needs replacing.”

• March 2018: replaced the diverter valve diaphragm, so I could have hot water without the heating being on too. Didn’t work (“Might be time to admit defeat and call a professional”). Fortunately replacing the entire valve, along with the heat exchanger, did the trick, and professional help was avoided.

• February 2022: replaced the heat exchanger O-rings to stop a leak, and dried out the PCB. “hopefully that’ll keep it going for a bit longer.”

• 11 July this year: realised I had a fairly major leak from the hot water pipe under the kitchen floor. Turned off the hot water, and left a dehumidifier running 24×7 in the kitchen for a few weeks to hopefully dry things out.

• 5 September: after my half-hearted efforts to find a non-busy plumber failed, replaced the pipe myself with one running artfully round the frame of the door to the utility room. Turned on the water to find that it was, if anything, too hot – the diverter valve seemed to have gone again, and this time the burner just kept running, regardless of whether a tap was turned on. Turned off the boiler.

Other than that, not a huge amount to report. Fat Cat pub night again on Wednesday, and the Saxons 5 mile race on Sunday (rounding off my lowest mileage week since I caught Covid in 2022 – this time purely due to laziness).