It’s that time again. Insurance season and at this very moment the renewal notice for my home insurance is lying on the desk in front of me, waiting for me to do something. Like renewing it, I suppose. That’s what we all do with our home insurance – we renew it without looking to see what we’re getting. This time I decided to have a look. My first search through the small print policy was to see what the home insurance policy actually covered. First was a list of ‘unfortunate’ events such as theft, fire, flood, burglary and vandalism. I called the claims department of the insurance company and asked if the 20 year old boiler in the roof of my house bursts and water pours in and ruins my Persian carpets, am I covered? They transferred the call to a Persian carpet assessor, we had a long discussion about the make, thread, number of stitches per square inch and he informed me that the carpet requires special insurance and could he call round to look at it? He then asked if I had any good or valuable paintings hanging on the walls under the old boiler. I told him about the Monet I had picked up at Sotheby’s and the Picasso that Uncle Edward had bequeathed to me as his favorite nephew. The assessor said he would be around in under an hour. I went back to the claims department and asked if my house was totally destroyed by fire, does my home insurance policy cover the total replacement of the property? A lot of throat clearing, hemming and hawing went on and then the call was transferred to the survey department, who asked many questions about the construction details, materials, area and age of the building. A long silenced followed and I could hear the clicking of computer or calculator keys and then a voice informed me that due to the increase in building costs caused by the rise in the price of oil on the world market, I should increase the replacement value of my house by at least 12 percent. At this point I was sorry that I had looked at my home insurance policy at all. My little investigation was going to cost me lots of money. I understood that I’ve been lucky up to now. I guess I’ll sleep easier at night too.