Five days without heating proved what I already feared

There's a saying that you don't hear that often these days - 'they don't make them like they used to'.

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One of the reasons that folk haven't really bothered saying this since the time when you could light up at the bar is that it has become the ultimate truism; along with water being wet and that a pint always costs that much nicer when it costs less than a fiver.

Unless you're talking about mobile phones, there's very little these days that's much more cop than they were when there were only four tv channels, which, while we're at, produced programmes of a far higher standard than much of the bilge we are forced to endure now.