This is a cautionary tale about an American who died after the utility company cut off his electricity – he took 4 days to freeze to death.  How long did the gas ’situation’ go on for in Kiev?  Well, the reason for the cut off was because this old bloke didn’t pay his bill. 

This reminded me of December time when a notice with names and numbers was posted on the front door of our building.  We pondered over this for a few days (read: we looked at the notice and thought – yep, whatever that means - as befits all notices in our building) until I eventually bumped into lovely Dmitri (a story for another day involving our neighbour and his underpants) who explained that this was a list of apartments in our block and their outstanding utility bills.  brrrrrrrrrr could have been chilly in there…….