I was being facetious when I conflated the arrival of summer time with the arrival of summer itself but the central heating system has taken me at my word and stopped. With snow forecast over the next few days this is not good news.

Applying my limited understanding of these things and consulting the manual I increased the water pressure, which had certainly fallen below the recommended level, and bled all the radiators but to no avail.

I'll give it twenty-four hours to come to its senses then I'll call out the experts.

I called for expert help recently by emailing a BT support service with a query. The reply was from one Garry Watson who had clearly not devoted much time to reading my question. The advice was to ring a helpline.

A few days later I had worked the thing out for myself and in a spirit of goodwill towards men I sent an email saying "I don't need your help any more thanks". I got a reply from this same Garry Watson saying "We understand you are having problems with BT Vision. If this persists please ring ......".

Calling a computer Hal led to all sorts of trouble. Calling one Garry Watson seems at least to do no harm even if it does no good.

I called my central heating system all sorts of names this morning but I shall just call it Garry Watson in future.