I’ve spent the morning syphoning another 120 litres of heating oil making a tally of 650 litres and eight bars (see yesterday). By my reckoning that’s about £450 of oil now residing in our tank and that should keep us warm until at least February. That’s such a boost to our flagging spirits.

The downside was that I then spent the afternoon inside the secret supply tank, cleaning it out ready for transportation to the dump. Believe me there is no pleasure in spending time inside an oil tank, however ex and however much there is now a bloody big hole in the side, made to facilitate me getting inside it to clean it before it makes its final journey to the great rubbish tip in the sky. It’s nasty, smelly, dangerous and deeply unpleasant all at once. The smell of oil gets so deeply into your pores and up your nose that even after a shower it’s still there, penetrating everything.

So now the old storage tank is de-gunked but the downside is that I am very much gunked. Gunked up to the eyeballs. Other than the state of our oil tank, the only thing that mitigates the gunkiness is the sight of my Lilywhites putting five past Dinamo Tblisi this evening in the Europa Cup. COYS.