Done - ToDo

Done:

• Sorted out regular swimming - Tuesdays at 7:15 PM, and hopefully we'll manage a full hour, as we did this week.
• Ate proper lunch even when unsupervised.
• Started "daily" exercise routine, designed to counteract effects of slothly lifestyle.
• Did more laundry, including sorting out clothes to be stored until next summer.
• Did some washing up, indicating the end of my apathy towards housework.

ToDo:

• Finish washing up.
• Do yet more laundry, espcially bedding.
• Get to Council offices and apply for (a) Passport to Leisure, and (b) visitors' parking permits.
• Post two letters.
• Buy bread and Weetabix.
• Sort out coats in downstairs hallway. Two people don't need more than 3 coats each, surely?
• Find a dentist and make an appointment.
• Sort out various flights and visiting schedules - this will be a jet-setting winter.

Neighbours and Noxious fumes

The houses on either side of us in our terrace are rented out. One is a shared house (5 professionals, no-one accepting responsibility for the pile of rubbish outside their front door, 5 cars parked on the street) and one is two flats (upstairs, mysterious never-seen lady tenant with indoor cat, downstairs, lovely lady tenant with normal cat). The downstairs flat has gas fired central heating and a gas boiler for the hot water.

The vent is a pipe that comes straight out of the wall at top-of-window level. This means that the gas exhaust from her boiler comes straight in our kitchen window, apart from the bits that are wafted through our dining room window. This means that we don't open the windows in those two rooms lest I get sick, as one does if one inhales very much inthe way of natural gas fumes.

She says - and I believe her - that her landlord had a CORGI-registered engineer check the whole thing out last June, when we last mentioned it to her, and that he said that it was all fine, legal, and perfectly safe. I badly want to believe that the engineer was lying and if she chases it up (which she has promised to do, just now) the problem will be solved and I will be able to open the kitchen window, and maybe, next summer, take my baby into the garden from time to time (currently, the smell of gas throughout the garden is often too strong for me to want to subject a baby to it; I was really worried when my sister had her baby here in July).

But what if the engineer was telling the truth and we have to just put up with it? Is there any way I can force her landlord to get a better vent, or a vent which directs the fumes away from my windows, if he's technically legal? My own gas boiler has a different vent, with a kind of grille over it, and it doesn't produce any noticable smells even if I run the boiler and go and sit next to the vent itself.

I used to work in the dining room next to the window, which was great, until I realised that the gas was making me sick. Now I have to work in the spare bedroom, which doesn't have the same amenities in terms of huge horizontal worksurfaces.