Straight after breakfast I got cracking typing up the minutes of Burton Skyline's AGM held last Tuesday. It always takes me two or three hours to get it done, tying myself in knots trying to include everything and get the sense and grammar right!

The top photo is of paperwork relating to the minutes, the bottom photo is of the shadows that caught my eye.

Just before lunch I realised that the heating wasn't coming on when it should, had a look and found an error message on the boiler... oh no! I texted my plumber, who quickly rang me back - it was the drain pipe for the condensate from the boiler at fault, it was frozen. The drain pipe runs across the top of the flat porch roof over the front door (think Wimpey 1972) so I got the steps out of the garage, climbed them with a kettle of boiling water, poured and waited. Reset the boiler and it was okay thank goodness. After lunch I scraped the car and went to B&Q, I need pipe lagging otherwise it's just going to happen again. 

Then onto GoOutdoors to buy a leash for the ice axe of yesterday - I hadn't actually thought of going there :-(  - except that they didn't sell leashes by themselves... so I opted to get another axe with leash. The one that GoOutdoors stocks now is much better than my original one, it has a properly grippy handle and is branded Grivel instead of North Ridge, although the North Ridge axes were made by Grivel... ha! It's a snob thing! Luckily they had the size I needed, and I'll most likely sell my old axe, leashless. 

N.B. when you shop at GoOutdoors don't forget to ask them for an extra 10% discount if you hold cards for belonging to RSPB, YHA, Ramblers, BMC, Caravan Club and who knows what else. It's always worth a try.

As soon as I got home I sent a text to my Ramblers group friend, who lives a couple of streets away, asking if he was available for stepladder holding. I was waiting for a text reply but got a knock on the door instead, he'd been on his way back from Tesco and seen my text. So, armed with pipe lagging, bread knife and cable ties, I stood on the top of the steps with John holding them and got it done. There are still the two small sections with bends at each end that are not lagged, but hopefully it's enough that the 1.5 metre straight section is. I'll find out tomorrow. I was very grateful for John's help.

Then I got the minutes finished and sent out. Hurrah!

Edit: 7.30pm the pipe has frozen again, so I'd better lag those awkward corners. Depressing.