And the good news is...
a) I don't seem to have the cold I thought was impending yesterday evening (though I was woken up unnecessarily early by an evil sinus headache, now dispersed, thanks to Sudafed Dual Relief MAX.).
b) The man did come to look at the gasmeter (this took all of 30 seconds).
c) And I have now added sufficient verbiage to my paper from the Belgium conference that it now looks like an article, with footnotes and everything.