Water, yes. Hot water, no.

So now I had water. To be slightly more accurate, I had cold water. I turned my attention to the boiler, which was of a design I had never seen before. Luckily, there was a thick instruction manual tucked behind one of the pipes. I scanned the pages in search of the English version of what I hoped was the idiot's guide. There were pages in French and German, pages in Spanish and Danish, in Italian and what could have been Serbo-Croat. But nothing in English. I turned to the French section and found the page dealing with lighting the boiler. At least, I thought that was what the page was about. An hour or so and three cigarettes later, and after much thumbing of a large dictionary, I had what I believed was a reasonable translation. Sure, there were words missing, but I was able to guess these. But I was no wiser about how to light up the boiler.

As I sat pondering the problem, I found that I had picked up the bundle of papers that I had been given by the notaire along with the keys. Amongst them was the invoice for installing the boiler some four years previously. Light dawned, and salvation was at hand! I telephoned the man who had undertaken the installation and interrupted his lunch. Within the hour a van pulled up outside the house and a gnome appeared on the doorstep. Monsieur Ebert was about four feet six tall, four feet wide, and, unusually for a Frenchman, had a big, bushy beard. It was not long before he had sorted the problem, but I had been quite unable to follow his explanation as he spoke with a very thick, local accent. All the same, I was more than happy to hand him a couple of 20 euro notes and to cross my fingers that nothing would go wrong.