January 2011
It was very, very cold, for a long, long time. Everything in my house froze - washing machine, dishwasher, and the main water pipe. While I was thawing that with a hairdryer my wife collected snow and melted it in a pan in order to have water to wash, brush teeth and make cups of tea. The kids thought this was great. I was less amused.

Even when we had running water we had to do the washing up by hand (ok, not too much of a hardship) but couldn't wash our clothes because of frozen pipes on the washing machine. Faced with having to go to the launderette we chose to build up a higher and higher pile of dirty washing, while finding the last pairs of pants and socks at the bottom of drawers. Luckily I got it thawed before we ran out of clothes.
(Smale is stuffed, Thu 14 Jun 2012, 15:50, Reply)