We didn’t ever formally sack Michael or tell him we wouldn’t be using him for the next phase of our project. There was no “It’s not you, it’s me” or “I’ve changed. You’ve changed. We’ve changed” phone call. It’s not as if we left him standing outside the Odeon Cinema with a dozen roses in his hand though. He said that his offer lasted until the end of November so come the first of December he must have figured out what happened.
Last week Paul, the builder with his name on his clothing, gave us a quote which was exactly the amount Michael had originally said the building would cost. Good news. Then, on Tuesday of this week Malcolm came to take measurements so that he can undertake the building regulations work. It turned out that he knew of rather than knew Basil Bailey but he was able to inform Marianna that the interior design of our house wasn't done by Basil himself but by the man who designed the third incarnation of the 'Bailey's; The Furniture People' shop. The carpeted walls and ceilings were his idea. I've been worshipping the wrong person. And the designer is still alive. We could track him down, give him a budget and see if he could work his magic again forty years later.
Friday, 4 December 2009
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
Never Question The Great Oz
After receiving Malcolm’s much cheaper quote we emailed Michael, asking how it could be that we now had a formal quote based on the plans and it was still cheaper and why he now saw the cost of the project as being so much more than he previously did. Here is his response –
From: michael@$$$$$$$$$$$$$.com
To: pbodger@$$$$mail.co.uk
Subject: Building Regulation Fees
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:40:13
I refer to your email of 17th November 2009.
My fee proposal was based upon my calculation of the anticipated cost of the project including a contingency for unknowns, and potential client changes during the build. Those costs also include our involvement and incorporation of new heating installations throughout the house, together with a new electrical installation and other items we have previously discussed.
I am surprised at the building regulation fee you mention, and would sound a note of caution for you:-
1. Is the “Architect” you mention a fully qualified Architect on the ARKUK register and a RIBA member?
2. Is he or she a member of a Chartered Practice?
3. Is he or she a “one man band”?
4. Has he or she adequate professional indemnity insurance to protect your interests?
In my professional experience (of over 40 years), a bone-fide Architects practice cannot even break even on a fee so low, and their insurers would be unlikely to cover them for such an uncommercial fee on the basis that their risk to reward ratio would be unacceptable.
I can only say beware what you are contemplating, for in this world, it is a truth that you get what you pay for.
For my part, this practice is offering you a comprehensive and experienced service, which in the longer term will give you value for money, which requires investment in time at the building regulations drawing stage to incorporate or make allowances for all the personalising elements you have identified that you wish to be incorporated, to ensure a smooth and co-ordinated building project later.
I doubt whether the quoted fee will give that level of service, and I would be concerned regarding the on-going support you might receive during the building process, especially as you both have little or no experience of building projects.
I regret therefore that if you are inviting me to reconsider my fee again, then I must decline, and will look forward with interest over the coming months to see how your project is progressing.
If, however, you wish to reconsider, my offer remains open until the end of November.
Regards
MICHAEL PILKINGTON
PARTNER
It’s not good is it? There’s no ‘Dear Marianna and Patrick’ at the beginning and he now signs off with both names. And the reduction in his fee turns out to be an offer lasting for a limited period only. Clearly, he hasn’t been pleased that we have dared to question his fees. I feel there also a hint of threat in the “will look forward with interest over the coming months to see how your project is progressing” bit. Does that mean he’ll be standing across the road watching and laughing while it all collapses around our ears? Without even knowing Malcolm he classifies him as having the intellect and talent of the ‘Loose Women’ panel. He also felt the need to point out that he’s been doing this for over forty years. Is that to remind me that I’m funding a soon to begin retirement? Malcolm is no spring chicken but I only assumed he’d always been an architect. This time last year he may well have been sweeping the streets. The added extra that Michael offers is philosophy. He reminds us that “in this world, it is a truth that you get what you pay for”. This isn’t true. People pay me a fortune and all they get is prison. The first time I read his email I felt panicked and thought that we should stick with him to guarantee a good service but on reading it again it reads like blackmail.
Then, yesterday, we got a quote from Steve the builder which was just over half way between Michael’s original price and his new price. So we had to discuss whether we should cut our losses and go back to a ground floor extension only. This would mean new plans, a new application for planning permission and that the last few months had been wasted.
From: michael@$$$$$$$$$$$$$.com
To: pbodger@$$$$mail.co.uk
Subject: Building Regulation Fees
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:40:13
I refer to your email of 17th November 2009.
My fee proposal was based upon my calculation of the anticipated cost of the project including a contingency for unknowns, and potential client changes during the build. Those costs also include our involvement and incorporation of new heating installations throughout the house, together with a new electrical installation and other items we have previously discussed.
I am surprised at the building regulation fee you mention, and would sound a note of caution for you:-
1. Is the “Architect” you mention a fully qualified Architect on the ARKUK register and a RIBA member?
2. Is he or she a member of a Chartered Practice?
3. Is he or she a “one man band”?
4. Has he or she adequate professional indemnity insurance to protect your interests?
In my professional experience (of over 40 years), a bone-fide Architects practice cannot even break even on a fee so low, and their insurers would be unlikely to cover them for such an uncommercial fee on the basis that their risk to reward ratio would be unacceptable.
I can only say beware what you are contemplating, for in this world, it is a truth that you get what you pay for.
For my part, this practice is offering you a comprehensive and experienced service, which in the longer term will give you value for money, which requires investment in time at the building regulations drawing stage to incorporate or make allowances for all the personalising elements you have identified that you wish to be incorporated, to ensure a smooth and co-ordinated building project later.
I doubt whether the quoted fee will give that level of service, and I would be concerned regarding the on-going support you might receive during the building process, especially as you both have little or no experience of building projects.
I regret therefore that if you are inviting me to reconsider my fee again, then I must decline, and will look forward with interest over the coming months to see how your project is progressing.
If, however, you wish to reconsider, my offer remains open until the end of November.
Regards
MICHAEL PILKINGTON
PARTNER
It’s not good is it? There’s no ‘Dear Marianna and Patrick’ at the beginning and he now signs off with both names. And the reduction in his fee turns out to be an offer lasting for a limited period only. Clearly, he hasn’t been pleased that we have dared to question his fees. I feel there also a hint of threat in the “will look forward with interest over the coming months to see how your project is progressing” bit. Does that mean he’ll be standing across the road watching and laughing while it all collapses around our ears? Without even knowing Malcolm he classifies him as having the intellect and talent of the ‘Loose Women’ panel. He also felt the need to point out that he’s been doing this for over forty years. Is that to remind me that I’m funding a soon to begin retirement? Malcolm is no spring chicken but I only assumed he’d always been an architect. This time last year he may well have been sweeping the streets. The added extra that Michael offers is philosophy. He reminds us that “in this world, it is a truth that you get what you pay for”. This isn’t true. People pay me a fortune and all they get is prison. The first time I read his email I felt panicked and thought that we should stick with him to guarantee a good service but on reading it again it reads like blackmail.
Then, yesterday, we got a quote from Steve the builder which was just over half way between Michael’s original price and his new price. So we had to discuss whether we should cut our losses and go back to a ground floor extension only. This would mean new plans, a new application for planning permission and that the last few months had been wasted.
Tuesday, 1 December 2009
Amber
Sometimes it’s difficult to identify action and reaction, how one thing that you do, decision you make or thing that happens to you returns and impacts on you and your life later. It’s not like those domino tricks you used to see on Roy Castle’s Record Breakers where you saw the chain reaction. My current theory is this; a few years ago I was attacked by a patient. He did his absolute best to crack my skull open like a hard boiled egg using the base of a mug and his fist. Forty Six months later I bought this house. There’s clear cause and effect there. I was brain damaged. We bought a house that’s in a semi-derelict state so that we can spend a fortune fixing it up into a lovely house. Why didn’t we just buy one of those lovely finished houses and cut out the stressful bit in the middle? Taking on a house like this is like starting smoking in school; it initially seems fun but is a lifelong committment and can have long lasting health implications.
Things seemed to grind to a halt very quickly after we got the planning permission granted. Just before we got the notification Michael sent us the price structure for the next phase. In his original quote from months ago Stage 3 had ‘price to be agreed’ next to it. That seemed fine at the time. However, two of the other applicants in our original Architect Idol had given an indication of their prices at this stage. They were twenty five and forty percent of the figure Michael was now quoting us. This was a shock. He’d come up with this figure based on an estimation of the cost of the project which was now fifty percent more than it was the last time he estimated the cost. This was a bigger shock. I’m already working more than a seventy hour week and don’t want to commit myself to doing so for evermore to fund an ever growing project and his retirement. So, we hoped he had miscalculated somewhere. We sent him an email that politely said ‘WTF?’. He wrote back explaining the calculations but, as a goodwill gesture, took nearly a thousand pounds from his fee. It worried me how quickly and easily he did this. His estimation of the cost of the final project didn’t change though. On Sunday we drafted another email that queried this increase in the price but are yet to send it. The problem is that I have no idea if his prices are reasonable or not. It’s not like standing in the supermarket where you can compare the price and quality of product A and B and ownbrand C. He also wants us to make decisions now about the positioning of lights, sockets, materials for doors and windows and probably the colour of bathroom towels. During the week while I travelled the country, wrote reports and wished it would all go away Marianna was typically proactive and contacted a new architect and two builders.
Yesterday, Malcolm the architect visited. He was recommended by Becky, next door, months ago, but we lost the paper she wrote his name on and so he wasn’t part of the original Architect Idol. He was very like Sir Ian McKellan in looks and mannerisms and was very down to earth. He didn’t tour the house at all but did a through inspection of the plans. He was impressed by Michael’s design and the realisation of Marianna’s ideas and surprised that planning permission had been granted. Perhaps, with Michael, as well as his big office in the town centre, we’re paying for his connections. Or the huge fee is turned into pound notes in a brown envelope to go into a planning officer’s back pocket. A new worry that occurred to me is that very little of what helped us get the planning permission has been submitted to paper but is in Michael’s head. Malcolm's estimate of the final cost was back to where Michael had put it originally. Today Malcolm sent us his quote which was 40% of Michael’s fee. We’re not sure now if we should sack him or ask him if he can drop to this.
Today, at 9.15, Paul, a builder, visited. The name of his company was impressively printed on his truck, t-shirt and jacket. He toured the house with us, made notes and took it all very seriously. He was amazed by the house though and how much work would be involved while I was ashamed of the state of the house. We've now been here six months and haven't unpacked. We haven't reeally unpacked since we left Hull in August 2008. “It's a huge project. What were you thinking?” he asked me at one point. That’s not too encouraging is it? He said it was the second worst / biggest project he'd seen because so little of the existing building will be kept. I felt a little sad about this. I feel quite protective about the house and expect gasps of wonder and compliments. Everyone thinks their child is the best looking or most intelligent even though that couldn't possibly be true. He made it very clear that it would be impossible for us to live here during the building work and described how one team of men would be working on preparing for the extension while another gutted the existing house. Then, at eleven, Steve, the builder, called. He appeared slightly less professional and formal. He had Reebok printed on his shoes and Animal printed on his shirt which was a bit less impressive. He made little comment about all of it and followed us around the house somewhat passively. They both left with copies of the plans and will come up with prices to give us an idea whether Malcolm or Michael have been most accurate at estimating the costy of the building.
Things seemed to grind to a halt very quickly after we got the planning permission granted. Just before we got the notification Michael sent us the price structure for the next phase. In his original quote from months ago Stage 3 had ‘price to be agreed’ next to it. That seemed fine at the time. However, two of the other applicants in our original Architect Idol had given an indication of their prices at this stage. They were twenty five and forty percent of the figure Michael was now quoting us. This was a shock. He’d come up with this figure based on an estimation of the cost of the project which was now fifty percent more than it was the last time he estimated the cost. This was a bigger shock. I’m already working more than a seventy hour week and don’t want to commit myself to doing so for evermore to fund an ever growing project and his retirement. So, we hoped he had miscalculated somewhere. We sent him an email that politely said ‘WTF?’. He wrote back explaining the calculations but, as a goodwill gesture, took nearly a thousand pounds from his fee. It worried me how quickly and easily he did this. His estimation of the cost of the final project didn’t change though. On Sunday we drafted another email that queried this increase in the price but are yet to send it. The problem is that I have no idea if his prices are reasonable or not. It’s not like standing in the supermarket where you can compare the price and quality of product A and B and ownbrand C. He also wants us to make decisions now about the positioning of lights, sockets, materials for doors and windows and probably the colour of bathroom towels. During the week while I travelled the country, wrote reports and wished it would all go away Marianna was typically proactive and contacted a new architect and two builders.
Yesterday, Malcolm the architect visited. He was recommended by Becky, next door, months ago, but we lost the paper she wrote his name on and so he wasn’t part of the original Architect Idol. He was very like Sir Ian McKellan in looks and mannerisms and was very down to earth. He didn’t tour the house at all but did a through inspection of the plans. He was impressed by Michael’s design and the realisation of Marianna’s ideas and surprised that planning permission had been granted. Perhaps, with Michael, as well as his big office in the town centre, we’re paying for his connections. Or the huge fee is turned into pound notes in a brown envelope to go into a planning officer’s back pocket. A new worry that occurred to me is that very little of what helped us get the planning permission has been submitted to paper but is in Michael’s head. Malcolm's estimate of the final cost was back to where Michael had put it originally. Today Malcolm sent us his quote which was 40% of Michael’s fee. We’re not sure now if we should sack him or ask him if he can drop to this.
Today, at 9.15, Paul, a builder, visited. The name of his company was impressively printed on his truck, t-shirt and jacket. He toured the house with us, made notes and took it all very seriously. He was amazed by the house though and how much work would be involved while I was ashamed of the state of the house. We've now been here six months and haven't unpacked. We haven't reeally unpacked since we left Hull in August 2008. “It's a huge project. What were you thinking?” he asked me at one point. That’s not too encouraging is it? He said it was the second worst / biggest project he'd seen because so little of the existing building will be kept. I felt a little sad about this. I feel quite protective about the house and expect gasps of wonder and compliments. Everyone thinks their child is the best looking or most intelligent even though that couldn't possibly be true. He made it very clear that it would be impossible for us to live here during the building work and described how one team of men would be working on preparing for the extension while another gutted the existing house. Then, at eleven, Steve, the builder, called. He appeared slightly less professional and formal. He had Reebok printed on his shoes and Animal printed on his shirt which was a bit less impressive. He made little comment about all of it and followed us around the house somewhat passively. They both left with copies of the plans and will come up with prices to give us an idea whether Malcolm or Michael have been most accurate at estimating the costy of the building.
Friday, 30 October 2009
Green Light
A very brief phone message from Michael this morning to say that full planning permission had been granted. Marianna was very pleased. I was very relieved. Next we give Michael thousands to prepare detailed plans, we contact builders to quote for the work and Brian decides if a brick through the window or a turd through the letterbox would be the appropriate response.
Thursday, 29 October 2009
Taxi
I worked in Liverpool on the 16th. It’s quite a trek from Leamington Spa. I was willing the client to stop denying aspects of the offence so I could get back in the car and head south more quickly. I was booked to be in Doncaster the next day so it was tempting to stay in the north and not go to see Karine Polwart, as booked weeks previously, that night but I did. And I was so glad I did. The Sat Nav took me on a meander around Coventry and its inner ring road before I came upon the venue; Taylor John’s House. This was a ticketless venue and my internet booking had produced a reference number which I had to give on the door. There was obviously an announcement of some kind just as I did this since, as I entered the bar, the majority of the bar's occupants moved into the performance area. Like a sheep I followed them. Well, more like a sheep that didn’t want to risk not getting a seat and having to stand for two hours. The performance area was fairly small and tunnel-like and reminded of The Cavern. It seemed tragic that after treading the boards for so many years Karine Polwart is still playing in such small venues. The seating arrangements were curious. There were wooden school chairs set out in rows and benches along the walls and then stacks of chairs from which you could select one and place it where you saw fit. Clearly, for the majority of those attending, there was then the standing option. I then became a sheep that rather fancied a drink and a trip to the toilet but didn’t dare risk losing his seat. I noticed people leave to get a drink and find themselves chairless when they returned. I wasn’t risking that. Within minutes the support act squeezed themselves onto the stage. They were called Lewis Garland and The Kett Rebellion. The songs were okay, although the lyrics were rather adolescent, but the most interesting thing was the band and their arrangements for the songs. There was the upright bass player who thought he was playing funk, a mandolin player who was playing sea shanties and a guy (who I hope doesn’t refer to himself as a musician) playing bongos and making beatbox noises. Lewis himself had a singing style which occasionally made me think of Aran sweaters, sandals, beards and folk singers singing with their eyes closed and their head tilted upwards. He had a CD to sell but the SatNav hadn’t taken me past an ATM and my hopes that the price of his CD’s would be exactly the £4.86 I had in my pocket were dashed so I couldn’t buy one.
Then came Karine accompanied by her brother Steven on guitar and vocals and Inge Thomson on piano accordion and vocals. The harmonies, guitar playing and Karine’s singing were all perfection. In a world where Cheryl Cole, with all of the dancing and singing talent of Helen Keller, is classed as a star and some people perform as if they’re wearing a ‘How bloody brilliant am I?’ t-shirt some people just quietly get on with being completely brilliant. She likes to tell little stories about the songs but Steven also talked quite a bit, largely to tease Inge. Since she was standing in front of a large white square that probably had films projected onto it at other times this evening’s teasing largely involved encouraging her to make shadow puppets with her hands. Karine encouraged us to buy Inge’s CD which she thought was “lovely and quirky”. Just before their final song Karine mentioned that she had an EP for sale and this would be her last release for some time since she planned to take the next three or four years off from recording and touring to be a mum. I was saddened by this. What did she mean spend more time with her son? Why couldn’t she be like a proper celebrity and parade her children around like designer handbags until they’re adolescent and can be photographed falling out of clubs covered in tattoos and members of the opposite sex? The CD had to be mine so I needed to find an ATM.
I rushed out of the venue, returned to my car and drove until I found an ATM. I pocketed my cash, got back into the car and took the SatNav from the glove compartment to re-enter the postcode for Taylor John’s house. A man then landed on the bonnet of the car before crawling around to the driver’s side window. He knocked on the glass and I lowered the window a centimetre. He put his eyes to the gap and the wiggling tips of his finders through it. I could smell the alcohol through the gap. He'd clearly been trying to preserve his body in alcohol for some time.
Pisshead: “My friend, you don’t need that. I’ll give you directions if you give me a lift”
Me: “Mmm?“
Pisshead: “Are you from Coventry? Coventry people are good people. Give me a lift”
Me: “I’m not from Coventry”
Pisshead: “Go on, mate, give me a lift. Don't be a wanker about it. I'll give you money.
I’ve left my wife at home on her own”.
Me: “Well, you should have stayed home and stayed sober”.
He banged his hand against the window as i drove off. I thought about reversing over him but knew this could cost me precious seconds that i could spend with Karine so I headed back to the venue. I got there fifteen minutes after the end of the show and the CD buying frenzy was coming to an end. I bought her EP, got a signature, and we had a little chat about the film ‘Creation’ since she’d taken part in a songwriting workshop about Darwin during the summer. I also bought Inge’s CD, which has indeed turned out to be quirky. It’s like chill out music on the piano accordion. I love it. Of course I then bought Jess Gardland’s CD.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmxytyDWur0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wns8KD2_U40&feature=related
Then came Karine accompanied by her brother Steven on guitar and vocals and Inge Thomson on piano accordion and vocals. The harmonies, guitar playing and Karine’s singing were all perfection. In a world where Cheryl Cole, with all of the dancing and singing talent of Helen Keller, is classed as a star and some people perform as if they’re wearing a ‘How bloody brilliant am I?’ t-shirt some people just quietly get on with being completely brilliant. She likes to tell little stories about the songs but Steven also talked quite a bit, largely to tease Inge. Since she was standing in front of a large white square that probably had films projected onto it at other times this evening’s teasing largely involved encouraging her to make shadow puppets with her hands. Karine encouraged us to buy Inge’s CD which she thought was “lovely and quirky”. Just before their final song Karine mentioned that she had an EP for sale and this would be her last release for some time since she planned to take the next three or four years off from recording and touring to be a mum. I was saddened by this. What did she mean spend more time with her son? Why couldn’t she be like a proper celebrity and parade her children around like designer handbags until they’re adolescent and can be photographed falling out of clubs covered in tattoos and members of the opposite sex? The CD had to be mine so I needed to find an ATM.
I rushed out of the venue, returned to my car and drove until I found an ATM. I pocketed my cash, got back into the car and took the SatNav from the glove compartment to re-enter the postcode for Taylor John’s house. A man then landed on the bonnet of the car before crawling around to the driver’s side window. He knocked on the glass and I lowered the window a centimetre. He put his eyes to the gap and the wiggling tips of his finders through it. I could smell the alcohol through the gap. He'd clearly been trying to preserve his body in alcohol for some time.
Pisshead: “My friend, you don’t need that. I’ll give you directions if you give me a lift”
Me: “Mmm?“
Pisshead: “Are you from Coventry? Coventry people are good people. Give me a lift”
Me: “I’m not from Coventry”
Pisshead: “Go on, mate, give me a lift. Don't be a wanker about it. I'll give you money.
I’ve left my wife at home on her own”.
Me: “Well, you should have stayed home and stayed sober”.
He banged his hand against the window as i drove off. I thought about reversing over him but knew this could cost me precious seconds that i could spend with Karine so I headed back to the venue. I got there fifteen minutes after the end of the show and the CD buying frenzy was coming to an end. I bought her EP, got a signature, and we had a little chat about the film ‘Creation’ since she’d taken part in a songwriting workshop about Darwin during the summer. I also bought Inge’s CD, which has indeed turned out to be quirky. It’s like chill out music on the piano accordion. I love it. Of course I then bought Jess Gardland’s CD.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmxytyDWur0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wns8KD2_U40&feature=related
Wednesday, 28 October 2009
Objections
On the morning of the fourteenth I got a call from a woman from the planning department who wanted to come over take some photographs of the rear of the house. When she arrived, looking like a bag lady, an hour later she told me that our neighbours (Martin and Anne) had written a letter objecting to our plans. I was shocked. Not shocked that they’d made a complaint but shocked that they’d done it without telling us when we’d done our best to be open with them by showing them the plans and telling them what we hoped to do months ago. Marianna thought their failure to inform us but to write a letter to the council was “very English”. The woman from the council took photographs of our house from the left to the right and a couple over Martin’s fence. A week later the architects forwarded us a letter saying that the council had objected because “The quality of the design caused the building to appear overbearing and out of keeping with the surrounding properties”. I liked the way the architects responded with comments about how our house currently looks but also with photographs of the extensions that neighbouring houses have. I still think we’ll be granted permission. And so will have to press ahead knowing that we’re upsetting the neighbours. We don’t have any alternatives that might appease them since the current plan is plan C or F. It’s this or no first floor.
Sunday, 25 October 2009
Canvas Bags
Over recent months, just before lights are turned out, Marianna forces me to look through Ideal Home type magazines. You’d be surprised how many different ones there are. Even though she assures me that we’re just doing this to get ideas and we won’t be buying any of these incredibly expensive kitchens or bathrooms my eyes glaze over and I just visualise the bank balance disappearing over the horizon. Despite this, as a little surprise for her on the 11th I took her to Grand Designs Live at the NEC. She was slightly unsure, as we approached the venue, if her surprise was to visit the Horse of the Year show or The Wedding Show since Grand Designs was more subtly signposted. As people wandered into the NEC it was fairly easy to spot who was going to which show. People holding hands were going to The Wedding Show, people in wellington boots and Barbour coats were going to see some horses and the stressed, prematurely aged people covered in brick dust were going to be joining us. So, over the next six hours we toured the huge venue and chatted to the stall holders about different types of windows and their benefits, different types of insulation, roof coverings and bathrooms and kitchens. I don’t know why you would need a television in your shower or one that rises out of your kitchen worktop. Does my life need a tap that produces filtered water or instant boiling water? Should our window frames be made from wood, aluminium, upvc or even bronze? Should we have solar panels? Windows that keep heat out in the Summer and keep it in in the Winter? It was all very interesting, although a little tiring on the legs, and not overly stressful. I’d been to the Motor Show at the NEC about twenty years earlier and my only memory of it was scantily clad women lying across cars and handing out brochures. Unfortunately, Grand Designs Live was completely sans bikini. A main activity was collecting free canvas bags from stalls to put all of the leaflets and brochures in. They’ll come in very handy at the checkout for the groceries. As well as wandering around and chatting to stallholders there were some talks given by big names in the world of interior design and building or, rather, big names with regard to doing these things on television. We missed Kevin McCloud’s talk but Marianna queued to get his signature on a copy of his book and I joined her just as she got to the front. He seemed to have left his personality on a building site somewhere. Later, we watched George Clarke’s talk in which he guided us through the transformation of his own house with many photographs. He was well over six feet tall when he looks to be far from that on tv. I've had to re-think my opinion of Danny DeVito. I was very impressed with George and his enthusiasm and how he’d used lots of interior windows and glass floors and ceilings to keep natural light flowing through the house. It made me wonder what use we could make with the dozens of mirrors we inherited from Basil. His next project is to dig out a basement beneath the house. I guess fame is still very new to George but I was impressed that 45 minutes after he’d finished his talk he was still signing autographs, shaking hands and kissing young women. It was a Grand day out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVh15aUt8-c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVh15aUt8-c
Friday, 23 October 2009
The red card
You wouldn’t think this sort of thing would happen in Leamington. I’ve continued attending Leamington FC home games since my first visit at the start of the season. The excitement of seeing fourteen goals in my first two games hasn’t been maintained and they’ve been looking quite poor lately. On the 10th the club sacked the manager, Jason Cadden. He’d held the job for nine years, had guided the team to promotion five times and they were promoted as league Champions last season. They were tenth in the league when he was sacked. This was done in a proper fashion though. In the car park at the ground where they’d just lost. The chairman asked him if he’d call in to his office on the following Monday but he said he wasn’t available. The chairman said in the local paper that he thought Cadden sensed something was up from his body language so when he asked why he wanted to see him he sacked him. It reminded me of “I thought he was reaching for a gun so I shot him”.
Thursday, 22 October 2009
Cold
Something seemed to happen on the first of October when Autumn began. The temperature in the house dropped by about forty degrees. This shouldn't be surprising given how little double glazing there is and how the windows aren't even airtight but it's a bad sign given that it is only October and i wonder what it will be like in here come January. The central heating, such as it is, will warm the sitting room and kitchen but a chill hits you if you leave those rooms. I visualise heat coming from the radiators and flying straight through the windows onto the street. We'll stand out there if we want to warm up. At the moment we both have colds. Since we're living like squatters in a Tracey Emin exhibition we might as well break up the floorboards and make a fire.
Saturday, 17 October 2009
Talk to you the more
I don't know why the email below ended up in my Junk email box. That is normally filled with emails from people wanting to tell me about an amazing electronics company they've come across that could supply me with everything I could need at low low prices. And I don't know why the young lady targeted me, although I did make a wish for a 92 year old millionairess with a heart condition when blowing out the candles on my last birthday cake.
From: Mariam Abdullah (missmariam209@info2link.biz)
Sent: 11 October 2009 03:01:52
To: pbodger@hotmail.co.uk
Dearest P Bodger
I humbly write to solicit for your partnership and assistance in the transfer and investment of my inheritance fund USD$17.5M from my late father who died mysteriously last Dec.
It was very evident that he was poisoned to death. In my culture, when a man dies, if he does not have a male child, the brothers shares his property leaving both the wife and the daughters empty handed including the house they live in. This is the exact case with me as I am the only daughter of my father. I lost my mother when I was barely a year old and my father refused to re-marry another wife because he felt solely responsible for my mother's death.
This is so because he concentrated much on his businesses that he rarely pays attention to domestic affairs. He was always travelling taking care of his businesses that he did not notice when my mother took ill. He thought it was a minor illness and was ignorant of this. My mother on her own resorted to self-medication. It was not until the illness degenerated that my father took my mother to hospital where she was diagnosed to find out that hypatitis had eaten deep into her blood stream. She didn't last long before she died.This happened when I was barely a year old. Based on this, my father could not forgive himself easily because of it and said he was responsible for her death as he could have saved her if only he had paid attention to the things at home rather than concentrating much on his businesses.
Despite all entreaties by friends and relatives, he refused to remarry but ensured that I had everything that I wanted. It was as a result of this that he made me the next of kin to his fund deposit with the bank and stated that in the event of any eventuality, I should have a direct access to the fund only when I am 25 years of age otherwise, I should have a guardian/partner intercede on my behalf for the release of the funds to me. Unfortunately, he died late last year and I am 19 years of age currently.
This is why I have contacted you to serve as a guardian to me and as my foreign partner for the transfer and investment of the fund overseas My uncles does not know about the fund because they had already taken my father's houses and other properties because I am a girl and they said I do not have rights for any property. They have requested to have my father's bank papers but I simply told them that I do not know where he kept them.The younger brother took the house in the village while the houses in the town were sold out they shared the proceed they got from the sale.
Right now i am in the hotel and do sincerely want to travel out of my country. This can only happen when I have secured the release and transfer of the funds in the bank.This why it is important that we have a plan on the type of lucrative business that we can invest the funds on.
I had at various times had discussions with the director of international remittance unit of the bank where my father deposited the funds and I was assured that once, I have someone who would be willing to receive the funds on my behalf, they shall commence all proceedings to effect the release and transfer of the funds into the person's designated account.
Now, that you have signified your interest to partner with me, it would only be very necessary if you contact the bank and request for the release and transfer of my inheritance fund into your nominated account for the purpose of investment and to further have me come over to your country to continue with my studies.I shall be giving you the bank's contact details as soon as I hear backfrom you so that you will go ahead and contact the bank,Your urgent response will be appreciated. please contact me with my Alternative email address (m1990abdullah@live.fr)
Talk to you the more.
Regard Sincerely Sister,
Mariam Abdullah
Since receiving this i end all conversations with "Talk to you the more".
From: Mariam Abdullah (missmariam209@info2link.biz)
Sent: 11 October 2009 03:01:52
To: pbodger@hotmail.co.uk
Dearest P Bodger
I humbly write to solicit for your partnership and assistance in the transfer and investment of my inheritance fund USD$17.5M from my late father who died mysteriously last Dec.
It was very evident that he was poisoned to death. In my culture, when a man dies, if he does not have a male child, the brothers shares his property leaving both the wife and the daughters empty handed including the house they live in. This is the exact case with me as I am the only daughter of my father. I lost my mother when I was barely a year old and my father refused to re-marry another wife because he felt solely responsible for my mother's death.
This is so because he concentrated much on his businesses that he rarely pays attention to domestic affairs. He was always travelling taking care of his businesses that he did not notice when my mother took ill. He thought it was a minor illness and was ignorant of this. My mother on her own resorted to self-medication. It was not until the illness degenerated that my father took my mother to hospital where she was diagnosed to find out that hypatitis had eaten deep into her blood stream. She didn't last long before she died.This happened when I was barely a year old. Based on this, my father could not forgive himself easily because of it and said he was responsible for her death as he could have saved her if only he had paid attention to the things at home rather than concentrating much on his businesses.
Despite all entreaties by friends and relatives, he refused to remarry but ensured that I had everything that I wanted. It was as a result of this that he made me the next of kin to his fund deposit with the bank and stated that in the event of any eventuality, I should have a direct access to the fund only when I am 25 years of age otherwise, I should have a guardian/partner intercede on my behalf for the release of the funds to me. Unfortunately, he died late last year and I am 19 years of age currently.
This is why I have contacted you to serve as a guardian to me and as my foreign partner for the transfer and investment of the fund overseas My uncles does not know about the fund because they had already taken my father's houses and other properties because I am a girl and they said I do not have rights for any property. They have requested to have my father's bank papers but I simply told them that I do not know where he kept them.The younger brother took the house in the village while the houses in the town were sold out they shared the proceed they got from the sale.
Right now i am in the hotel and do sincerely want to travel out of my country. This can only happen when I have secured the release and transfer of the funds in the bank.This why it is important that we have a plan on the type of lucrative business that we can invest the funds on.
I had at various times had discussions with the director of international remittance unit of the bank where my father deposited the funds and I was assured that once, I have someone who would be willing to receive the funds on my behalf, they shall commence all proceedings to effect the release and transfer of the funds into the person's designated account.
Now, that you have signified your interest to partner with me, it would only be very necessary if you contact the bank and request for the release and transfer of my inheritance fund into your nominated account for the purpose of investment and to further have me come over to your country to continue with my studies.I shall be giving you the bank's contact details as soon as I hear backfrom you so that you will go ahead and contact the bank,Your urgent response will be appreciated. please contact me with my Alternative email address (m1990abdullah@live.fr)
Talk to you the more.
Regard Sincerely Sister,
Mariam Abdullah
Since receiving this i end all conversations with "Talk to you the more".
Prail
I love that we now live in a town with its own gig/concert venues. When we lived in Hull we got to see all sorts of bands, comedians and shows but I spent many years in Wisbech and no one talented went within a hundred miles of the place. On the 7th I went to The Assembly in Leamington to see Ben Taylor (son of Carly Simon and James Taylor). Since Marianna and the car were in Leominster I walked the two miles to the venue.
I’d already done the equidistant walk to the train station and back, having worked in Birmingham earlier in the day. It had been a week of delayed trains so far. I’d been at court in St. Albans the previous day and arrived late. Our train sat at Kilburn for nearly half an hour, close to our eventual Marylebone destination. The only good thing about this was that the people who choose to leave their seats and stand by the doors ten minutes before arrival stood there for forty minutes. I never know why they do this but wondered if they were experiencing some inner turmoil over whether they should return to their seat or stick it out. So, I arrived at St. Albans magistrate’s court fifty five minutes late and soaked in rainwater despite my use of an umbrella. I wasn’t previously aware they don’t work when you’re running. I found the usher outside of the courtroom who looked me up and down, clearly struggling to comprehend how someone could become so wet. He told me they were intending to adjourn for another day because of my absence and that I should go into the courtroom and alert the defence barrister to my presence. I intended to sneak into the courtroom and cough or mime to let the barrister know I was there but she spotted me and loudly announced “Mr Bodger has arrived” (ELVIS IS IN THE BUILDING!). All was saved and the trial would go ahead. I don’t know why they were making such a fuss about my absence since I didn’t give evidence for another five and a half hours.
It must be my age or that I’m out of practice since normally if a ticket to an event says 7pm I expect something to happen shortly after seven. This was not the case at The Assembly. I got there shortly after seven and sat feeling conspicuous and lemon-like in the bar nursing my orange and lemonade and playing brain training on my phone. After a while I ventured into the auditorium to do the same, but with less bright lights. The performance area was impressive but horribly decorated. The building opened in 1926 as a dance hall and remained as such into the sixties. Then it was a bingo hall in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s and then was abandoned and derelict until being re-designed (appallingly) by Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and re-opened in August 2008.
Finally, at about 8.20, whilst I was in the toilet, a young lady called Jess Morgan came onto the stage and sang some perfectly pleasant songs whilst jiggling about as if her knees were Velcro’d together. Support acts can be a good opportunity to discover new artists. Some of my current favourites were discovered as support acts; Sarah Slean (supporting Ron Sexsmith in Calgary), Martha Tilston (Supporting Roddy Frame in Milton Keynes), Chris Sheehan (supporting Marti Pellow), Nerina Pallot (Supporting James Blunt in Dublin). However, I saw David Gray as a support act in 1994 and wasn’t at all impressed. Who knew he’d become a megastar. When Jess Morgan had finished her set I went along to buy her CD and get it autographed. This is a habit we’ve developed over recent years. I’m not sure why. I think Marianna likes me to practice conversations with people that don’t involve phrases like “For how many days after you’d killed your sister did you continue having sex with the body?”. I had a little chat and got a signature from the petite and lovely Karine Polwart last year. The strategy should be to say hello, request an autograph, say thank you and move on. Nothing more. Especially not in my case. We all have an inner dialogue, private thoughts that we keep to ourselves or share after an editing process has taken place but sometimes, at times of anxiety, I forget to edit. Last year I approached Richard John Thompson (supporting Midge Ure) with the three CD’s of his I’d just bought. When he’d signed them he handed them back to me with a wink, a smile and the word “priceless”. Unfortunately, the words “Well, only on Ebay” then left my mouth. He looked less than impressed. It was meant as a joke although I can’t see what sort right now but he clearly took it as an evaluation of how poorly his career was going at that point and that a signed or unsigned cd would be fetching bugger all on ebay. These incidents often haunt me. When I was nineteen I was introduced to someone called Laurie and the words “I’ve never met anyone named after the vehicle they were conceived in” left my mouth. I remember to edit sometimes or in appropriate situations. About a decade ago when working in a prison a disturbed and emotional (and married) prisoner disclosed that he’d had a homosexual experience with another prisoner. It occurred to me to say “One Swallow doesn’t make a Summer” but I didn’t.
I was hoping, as my normal bedtime approached, that Ben Taylor would be next on stage but there was a second support act. Why open the doors at seven and start so much later, especially with an audience of people in their forties and beyond? Support number two was called Roddy Hart and opened by saying “It’s okay, I’ve never heard of me either”. His songs were very good, memorable and he was accompanied by a very accomplished guitarist. I like people who engage with the audience rather than just play one song after another and he was very good at this. You won’t be surprised that I bought his CD later and he signed it for me. The CD is excellent, a nice mix of Dylan, Harrison and CSNY but also very unique and well produced.
Then, after a little interval, a man walked onto the stage, took off his rucksack and took two bottles from it, took off an overcoat, turned around and revealed himself to be Ben Taylor, sat down, picked up the guitar, waved at the sound man to turn off the background music and began his first song. He was worth the wait. His guitar playing was intricate and precise and his voice was as smooth as honey falling onto flesh. For every three minute song there was a five minute story about the song so we learnt about his parents, sister, his mother nagging him for a song about her, a song about finding that his live-in girlfriend had moved out when he returned home from touring and lots of other things. He had a drawling accent I wouldn’t normally associate with the area of the US he grew up in but you need that accent to use the word ‘man’ as often as he does, to call people ‘cats’ and to refer to the audience as “y’all”. He was cool. Marianna later commented that his father’s sperm was still full of heroin when he was conceived in 1977 so that may explain why he was so laid back. For most of the gig David Saw accompanied him. I didn’t take to him. This was almost purely because of the hat he was wearing. Well, it wasn’t the hat it was the jaunty angle he wore it at and the necktie and t-shirt combo. That’s just wrong and silly. Rather than be traditional and play his well known songs from his CD’s Ben played lots of new songs, since he promised three new CD releases over the next 12 to 18 months. He said he’d be around after the show to meet people and that his most recent CD was for sale at the merchandise stall and we were welcome to pay whatever we wished for it. Making his departure as unique as his arrival he ended with a poem.
I noticed that I was a little older than most of the people queuing to meet him at the end and a lot more male than all of them. Also, typically of Leamington Spa, everyone was handing over ten pounds for his CD's. When I asked for an autograph he asked for my name and then asked “Is that Patrick with a C and a K?”. With a lack of internal editing I said “Yes, but it only works if you put them at the very end”. Fortunately he laughed. I’ve no idea what he wrote on my CD. It appears t say “Thanks – Prail – Patrick – Ben”. I’ve had worse advice.
I’d already done the equidistant walk to the train station and back, having worked in Birmingham earlier in the day. It had been a week of delayed trains so far. I’d been at court in St. Albans the previous day and arrived late. Our train sat at Kilburn for nearly half an hour, close to our eventual Marylebone destination. The only good thing about this was that the people who choose to leave their seats and stand by the doors ten minutes before arrival stood there for forty minutes. I never know why they do this but wondered if they were experiencing some inner turmoil over whether they should return to their seat or stick it out. So, I arrived at St. Albans magistrate’s court fifty five minutes late and soaked in rainwater despite my use of an umbrella. I wasn’t previously aware they don’t work when you’re running. I found the usher outside of the courtroom who looked me up and down, clearly struggling to comprehend how someone could become so wet. He told me they were intending to adjourn for another day because of my absence and that I should go into the courtroom and alert the defence barrister to my presence. I intended to sneak into the courtroom and cough or mime to let the barrister know I was there but she spotted me and loudly announced “Mr Bodger has arrived” (ELVIS IS IN THE BUILDING!). All was saved and the trial would go ahead. I don’t know why they were making such a fuss about my absence since I didn’t give evidence for another five and a half hours.
It must be my age or that I’m out of practice since normally if a ticket to an event says 7pm I expect something to happen shortly after seven. This was not the case at The Assembly. I got there shortly after seven and sat feeling conspicuous and lemon-like in the bar nursing my orange and lemonade and playing brain training on my phone. After a while I ventured into the auditorium to do the same, but with less bright lights. The performance area was impressive but horribly decorated. The building opened in 1926 as a dance hall and remained as such into the sixties. Then it was a bingo hall in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s and then was abandoned and derelict until being re-designed (appallingly) by Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and re-opened in August 2008.
Finally, at about 8.20, whilst I was in the toilet, a young lady called Jess Morgan came onto the stage and sang some perfectly pleasant songs whilst jiggling about as if her knees were Velcro’d together. Support acts can be a good opportunity to discover new artists. Some of my current favourites were discovered as support acts; Sarah Slean (supporting Ron Sexsmith in Calgary), Martha Tilston (Supporting Roddy Frame in Milton Keynes), Chris Sheehan (supporting Marti Pellow), Nerina Pallot (Supporting James Blunt in Dublin). However, I saw David Gray as a support act in 1994 and wasn’t at all impressed. Who knew he’d become a megastar. When Jess Morgan had finished her set I went along to buy her CD and get it autographed. This is a habit we’ve developed over recent years. I’m not sure why. I think Marianna likes me to practice conversations with people that don’t involve phrases like “For how many days after you’d killed your sister did you continue having sex with the body?”. I had a little chat and got a signature from the petite and lovely Karine Polwart last year. The strategy should be to say hello, request an autograph, say thank you and move on. Nothing more. Especially not in my case. We all have an inner dialogue, private thoughts that we keep to ourselves or share after an editing process has taken place but sometimes, at times of anxiety, I forget to edit. Last year I approached Richard John Thompson (supporting Midge Ure) with the three CD’s of his I’d just bought. When he’d signed them he handed them back to me with a wink, a smile and the word “priceless”. Unfortunately, the words “Well, only on Ebay” then left my mouth. He looked less than impressed. It was meant as a joke although I can’t see what sort right now but he clearly took it as an evaluation of how poorly his career was going at that point and that a signed or unsigned cd would be fetching bugger all on ebay. These incidents often haunt me. When I was nineteen I was introduced to someone called Laurie and the words “I’ve never met anyone named after the vehicle they were conceived in” left my mouth. I remember to edit sometimes or in appropriate situations. About a decade ago when working in a prison a disturbed and emotional (and married) prisoner disclosed that he’d had a homosexual experience with another prisoner. It occurred to me to say “One Swallow doesn’t make a Summer” but I didn’t.
I was hoping, as my normal bedtime approached, that Ben Taylor would be next on stage but there was a second support act. Why open the doors at seven and start so much later, especially with an audience of people in their forties and beyond? Support number two was called Roddy Hart and opened by saying “It’s okay, I’ve never heard of me either”. His songs were very good, memorable and he was accompanied by a very accomplished guitarist. I like people who engage with the audience rather than just play one song after another and he was very good at this. You won’t be surprised that I bought his CD later and he signed it for me. The CD is excellent, a nice mix of Dylan, Harrison and CSNY but also very unique and well produced.
Then, after a little interval, a man walked onto the stage, took off his rucksack and took two bottles from it, took off an overcoat, turned around and revealed himself to be Ben Taylor, sat down, picked up the guitar, waved at the sound man to turn off the background music and began his first song. He was worth the wait. His guitar playing was intricate and precise and his voice was as smooth as honey falling onto flesh. For every three minute song there was a five minute story about the song so we learnt about his parents, sister, his mother nagging him for a song about her, a song about finding that his live-in girlfriend had moved out when he returned home from touring and lots of other things. He had a drawling accent I wouldn’t normally associate with the area of the US he grew up in but you need that accent to use the word ‘man’ as often as he does, to call people ‘cats’ and to refer to the audience as “y’all”. He was cool. Marianna later commented that his father’s sperm was still full of heroin when he was conceived in 1977 so that may explain why he was so laid back. For most of the gig David Saw accompanied him. I didn’t take to him. This was almost purely because of the hat he was wearing. Well, it wasn’t the hat it was the jaunty angle he wore it at and the necktie and t-shirt combo. That’s just wrong and silly. Rather than be traditional and play his well known songs from his CD’s Ben played lots of new songs, since he promised three new CD releases over the next 12 to 18 months. He said he’d be around after the show to meet people and that his most recent CD was for sale at the merchandise stall and we were welcome to pay whatever we wished for it. Making his departure as unique as his arrival he ended with a poem.
I noticed that I was a little older than most of the people queuing to meet him at the end and a lot more male than all of them. Also, typically of Leamington Spa, everyone was handing over ten pounds for his CD's. When I asked for an autograph he asked for my name and then asked “Is that Patrick with a C and a K?”. With a lack of internal editing I said “Yes, but it only works if you put them at the very end”. Fortunately he laughed. I’ve no idea what he wrote on my CD. It appears t say “Thanks – Prail – Patrick – Ben”. I’ve had worse advice.
Wednesday, 7 October 2009
Addict
A few years ago I wanted to de-clutter my life and so registered on Ebay. I had comics from my childhood, concert tickets and programmes, Beatles concert tickets, A ‘Happy Days’ board game, first issues of magazines, an ADIDAS bag from 1976 and dozens and dozens of things that I’d been moving from one house to another with some nonsensical sentimental value attached to them. Things that I initially wouldn’t have dreamt of parting with were eventually listed, sold, packed and sent to all corners of the planet. It just made more sense to me that I could turn something that had been in a box unappreciated for decades into some time for me to sit on a far away beach. When selling items I occasionally made use of friends who would bid against genuine bidders just to push the price up a bit for me. This only backfired once when I bought my own set of encyclopaedias. I may have got a bit carried away, since they knew me by name in the local post office, but I loved how uncluttered the house began to look. I didn’t buy anything, only sold. It sometimes amazed me how much people would pay for things, especially when a brief internet search would reveal that they were available cheaper elsewhere. Why would anyone pay for an autographed picture of Trevor Brooking from 1978?
More recently, Marianna has been gathering together clothes, shoes and bags which she no longer wants and we had begun listing them and selling them on Ebay with some success. Still selling and not buying.
Then, a few weeks ago, we went into a bar in Kenilworth. The décor was amazing. Or rather, the chairs and sofas and tables and sideboards were wonderful. It was like being on a ‘60’s film set or inside a Matt Monro song. Characteristically, Marianna asked one of the staff where they sourced all of the furniture and the answer was Ebay. The bar’s owners bought the chairs, reupholstered them and revitalised the woodwork and put them in the bar looking as good as the day they were made fifty years previously. So, a few hours later we were searching on Ebay for retro furniture. Our first purchase was a glass topped G-plan coffee table for £26. After seeing clients in Birmingham I drove to Walsall and collected the table from a very lovely man, who was a full-time Ebayer. I met him at his home and then we walked the 150 yards to his mother’s home where he kept his stock. She seemed to be in very poor health and I’m not sure if it counts as abuse that your son fills your house with items he bought for a pound in a charity shop and is selling for many times more on Ebay.
Next, was a chair which Marianna was particularly keen on. It looked like the sort of swivelling office chair that Reggie Perrin’s boss would sit in. The seller was fairly charmless; “I’ve had this chair for forty years. It’s in my garage and is in the way. Ron” is what it said on his Ebay listing. We noticed that he only lived ten miles from my parents so I did have a little plan for how it might be collected. We were the lucky winners for this quality item for a mere £1.02. Surely, this could only be a bargain. Within 24 hours he contacted me saying “Are you going to collect this chair or do I need to re-list it?”. He was operating at a level of social skills I professionally refer to as 'Greggs employee'. Marianna spoke to my dad to ask how he would feel about collecting it but it turned out that he was collecting a brand new car that day and wasn’t sure if wrestling a chair into it was quite how he wanted to christen this new purchase. After a few emails to Ron to ascertain the chair’s dimensions dad finally agreed to go and get it. He arrived at this house in the middle of the fens to find the chair in the driveway surrounded by four rather aggressive dogs (Have you seen Deliverance?) but it turned out that Ron was perfectly pleasant and even lifted the chair into the car. Once home dad sent me a text saying that it may have been overvalued.... by a pound.
Then, on our way to Bath on the 19th we happened upon an antique warehouse which had lots of proper antiques for obscene amounts of money that were of no interest to me but there were two 1950’s Wassily Marcel Breuer chairs. Cooler than a close up of Steve McQueen but far from cheap at £365 each. Marianna made a note of the name and a few days later looked them up on Ebay. There was another pair, already with a number of bids, at £100 each and yet to reach their reserve. The auction ended at £220 and the reserve still wasn’t met. I thought about contacting the seller to see what they might accept but we noticed that there was another pair of chairs ending the next morning with a starting price of £89 for the pair. The next day I entered my first bid of £89 and a few minutes later the auction ended without another bid being made. Something I could have bought for £715 purchased for £89. That’s the beauty of Ebay. The chairs were in York so five days later, after seeing a client in Hull, I headed north to collect them. The sellers turned out to be a firm of architects. I said hello and shook hands with Matt, my contact, took the first chair and put it next to the car and returned for the second. “I thought you’d have a bigger car or a van. Will you be able to take both of them?”, he said. “Oh,yes, there’s nothing won’t fit into the back of a Peugeot 206” I said confidently although I’d already noticed how much bigger the chairs looked next to the car than they had in the antiques warehouse. As I left I just caught Matt’s colleague say “This will be interesting to watch” and felt a little bit of pressure mounting. After some seconds looking at the chairs and the space inside the car I tried various ways of putting them and had it figured out on only the third combination. There was no way I was going to carry one of them back into their offices and admit defeat. I’d have put one on the roof and pushed the car or eaten one before I did that.
When I logged onto our Ebay account on the day of my successful £89 bid I noticed that Marianna was ‘watching’ several sofas from the fifties, sixties and seventies. They all looked thoroughly lovely, well maintained and completely of their time. The auction for two two-seater sofas of orangey, cubist, stainless steel loveliness was ending in only a matter of hours. Marianna was at a meeting. I sent her a text; “Would you like me to bid on these sofas?”. An hour or so passed and there was no reply. I sent another text; “The auction closes in 30 minutes. Shall we bid?”. No reply. Ten minutes later I called her mobile but she didn’t reply and I left an anxious message. And then I began bidding. The starting price was £100 which at £12.50 per buttock seemed very reasonable. There was an intense bidding war in increments of two pounds with two others but I won for £122. I was very pleased with myself although, obviously, I’d never have parted with that amount had this been a real auction. It felt like playing a video game. Marianna was less pleased when she returned home. She explained that ‘watching’ items was like pointing out something in a shop window as you walked past. It meant that you liked it or found it interesting and perhaps wanted to show it to your other half. It didn’t mean you were going to rush into the store and write a blank cheque for it. I hung my head. She also wondered how I planned to get two two-seater sofas from central London to the midlands. My shoulders dropped. I felt that she was raining on my parade (but had a point. A very good one).
The next morning I rang around eleven courier companies and men with vans to get prices for the collection. None were less than the amount I’d paid for the sofas. Suddenly they looked a lot less bargain-like. How could even this have become stressful? Where was the excitement of “Congratulations, you’ve won this item” now? I finally found ‘Green man with van’ (Justin) who would do the job in an environmentally sound way for less than the price of the sofas. I gave the sellers details to him and his details to the seller (ignoring the “Did you tell him I’m on the fourth floor?” comment) and returned to work and earning money to pay for our expanding furniture collection. During the late evening I received a text from Marianna; “I’m still working in the library. You need to start bidding if you want that other sofa”. We hadn’t discussed this but if that’s not carte blanche I don’t know what is. I feel a little too ashamed to tell you how much I finally won this item for but it was 21 bids more than the £50 starting price. When I won I didn’t feel the excitement of the day before it was more like dread; “Oh shit, what have I done?”. Marianna came home an hour or so later and in the midst of discussing what we’d done that day she asked; “How much did that sofa sell for?”. I told her. “How much was your final bid?”. I told her and she quickly noticed how similar these figures were. She explained that I needed to set myself a limit and then not go beyond it. The thing was I had done this but like Natalie Cassidy’s calorie intake it just went higher and higher. My limit was £70 (and not a penny more) but then someone bid £75 and suddenly my limit was £75 (and not a penny more) but then someone bid £80 and I couldn’t stop myself. I told her the good news that I’d found Justin so it would be no trouble for him to collect this sofa since it was only eight miles from the other two.
I rang Justin the next day and told him about the third sofa. He, who didn’t even know me, said I was clearly finding Ebay a little addictive and wondered if there was some health reason why I needed to sit down so much. I gave him the seller’s details and contacted the seller with Justin’s details. He rang later; “That woman with the sofas lived on the fourth floor and there was no lift”. “No! Really?”. He didn’t think he’d be able to come up that afternoon but would be over with all three sofas the next day, Sunday. He called on Sunday to tell me he’d collected the third sofa but wouldn’t be with us until after eight o’clock. Since we had plans to go out I wasn’t pleased by this. I thought about leaving a key somewhere or asking Brian to let Justin put the sofas in the garage but decided that I’d just stay in and wait for him. Justin rang again at five having realised that travelling from London to Leamington Spa and then to another job in Weston-super-Mare that evening was insane. He’d be with us in the morning. So we went out after all. At 8.40am he and his colleague, Adam, appeared with their green recycled biodiesel van, their wild surfer dude hair and our sofas. The sofas looked great. My “Congratulations, you’re a bidding genius” happiness returned. Martin saw us carry them into the house and may, possibly, have wondered why we were buying furniture when we don't have carpet or many working lights or heating. Not an unreasonable thought.
The kids from Grange Hill warned you to ‘Just say No’ to drugs but no one warns you about Ebay. It’s more addictive than heroin and a damned site more expensive. I haven’t looked at the website since my last successful bid but it’s tempting. I've spent more on sofas than Marianna made from selling clothing, bags and shoes made by designers I've never heard of. That wasn't the plan. However, I notice that Ebay now make recommendations based on previous purchases. I may have another look but only with a responsible, supervising adult present.
More recently, Marianna has been gathering together clothes, shoes and bags which she no longer wants and we had begun listing them and selling them on Ebay with some success. Still selling and not buying.
Then, a few weeks ago, we went into a bar in Kenilworth. The décor was amazing. Or rather, the chairs and sofas and tables and sideboards were wonderful. It was like being on a ‘60’s film set or inside a Matt Monro song. Characteristically, Marianna asked one of the staff where they sourced all of the furniture and the answer was Ebay. The bar’s owners bought the chairs, reupholstered them and revitalised the woodwork and put them in the bar looking as good as the day they were made fifty years previously. So, a few hours later we were searching on Ebay for retro furniture. Our first purchase was a glass topped G-plan coffee table for £26. After seeing clients in Birmingham I drove to Walsall and collected the table from a very lovely man, who was a full-time Ebayer. I met him at his home and then we walked the 150 yards to his mother’s home where he kept his stock. She seemed to be in very poor health and I’m not sure if it counts as abuse that your son fills your house with items he bought for a pound in a charity shop and is selling for many times more on Ebay.
Next, was a chair which Marianna was particularly keen on. It looked like the sort of swivelling office chair that Reggie Perrin’s boss would sit in. The seller was fairly charmless; “I’ve had this chair for forty years. It’s in my garage and is in the way. Ron” is what it said on his Ebay listing. We noticed that he only lived ten miles from my parents so I did have a little plan for how it might be collected. We were the lucky winners for this quality item for a mere £1.02. Surely, this could only be a bargain. Within 24 hours he contacted me saying “Are you going to collect this chair or do I need to re-list it?”. He was operating at a level of social skills I professionally refer to as 'Greggs employee'. Marianna spoke to my dad to ask how he would feel about collecting it but it turned out that he was collecting a brand new car that day and wasn’t sure if wrestling a chair into it was quite how he wanted to christen this new purchase. After a few emails to Ron to ascertain the chair’s dimensions dad finally agreed to go and get it. He arrived at this house in the middle of the fens to find the chair in the driveway surrounded by four rather aggressive dogs (Have you seen Deliverance?) but it turned out that Ron was perfectly pleasant and even lifted the chair into the car. Once home dad sent me a text saying that it may have been overvalued.... by a pound.
Then, on our way to Bath on the 19th we happened upon an antique warehouse which had lots of proper antiques for obscene amounts of money that were of no interest to me but there were two 1950’s Wassily Marcel Breuer chairs. Cooler than a close up of Steve McQueen but far from cheap at £365 each. Marianna made a note of the name and a few days later looked them up on Ebay. There was another pair, already with a number of bids, at £100 each and yet to reach their reserve. The auction ended at £220 and the reserve still wasn’t met. I thought about contacting the seller to see what they might accept but we noticed that there was another pair of chairs ending the next morning with a starting price of £89 for the pair. The next day I entered my first bid of £89 and a few minutes later the auction ended without another bid being made. Something I could have bought for £715 purchased for £89. That’s the beauty of Ebay. The chairs were in York so five days later, after seeing a client in Hull, I headed north to collect them. The sellers turned out to be a firm of architects. I said hello and shook hands with Matt, my contact, took the first chair and put it next to the car and returned for the second. “I thought you’d have a bigger car or a van. Will you be able to take both of them?”, he said. “Oh,yes, there’s nothing won’t fit into the back of a Peugeot 206” I said confidently although I’d already noticed how much bigger the chairs looked next to the car than they had in the antiques warehouse. As I left I just caught Matt’s colleague say “This will be interesting to watch” and felt a little bit of pressure mounting. After some seconds looking at the chairs and the space inside the car I tried various ways of putting them and had it figured out on only the third combination. There was no way I was going to carry one of them back into their offices and admit defeat. I’d have put one on the roof and pushed the car or eaten one before I did that.
When I logged onto our Ebay account on the day of my successful £89 bid I noticed that Marianna was ‘watching’ several sofas from the fifties, sixties and seventies. They all looked thoroughly lovely, well maintained and completely of their time. The auction for two two-seater sofas of orangey, cubist, stainless steel loveliness was ending in only a matter of hours. Marianna was at a meeting. I sent her a text; “Would you like me to bid on these sofas?”. An hour or so passed and there was no reply. I sent another text; “The auction closes in 30 minutes. Shall we bid?”. No reply. Ten minutes later I called her mobile but she didn’t reply and I left an anxious message. And then I began bidding. The starting price was £100 which at £12.50 per buttock seemed very reasonable. There was an intense bidding war in increments of two pounds with two others but I won for £122. I was very pleased with myself although, obviously, I’d never have parted with that amount had this been a real auction. It felt like playing a video game. Marianna was less pleased when she returned home. She explained that ‘watching’ items was like pointing out something in a shop window as you walked past. It meant that you liked it or found it interesting and perhaps wanted to show it to your other half. It didn’t mean you were going to rush into the store and write a blank cheque for it. I hung my head. She also wondered how I planned to get two two-seater sofas from central London to the midlands. My shoulders dropped. I felt that she was raining on my parade (but had a point. A very good one).
The next morning I rang around eleven courier companies and men with vans to get prices for the collection. None were less than the amount I’d paid for the sofas. Suddenly they looked a lot less bargain-like. How could even this have become stressful? Where was the excitement of “Congratulations, you’ve won this item” now? I finally found ‘Green man with van’ (Justin) who would do the job in an environmentally sound way for less than the price of the sofas. I gave the sellers details to him and his details to the seller (ignoring the “Did you tell him I’m on the fourth floor?” comment) and returned to work and earning money to pay for our expanding furniture collection. During the late evening I received a text from Marianna; “I’m still working in the library. You need to start bidding if you want that other sofa”. We hadn’t discussed this but if that’s not carte blanche I don’t know what is. I feel a little too ashamed to tell you how much I finally won this item for but it was 21 bids more than the £50 starting price. When I won I didn’t feel the excitement of the day before it was more like dread; “Oh shit, what have I done?”. Marianna came home an hour or so later and in the midst of discussing what we’d done that day she asked; “How much did that sofa sell for?”. I told her. “How much was your final bid?”. I told her and she quickly noticed how similar these figures were. She explained that I needed to set myself a limit and then not go beyond it. The thing was I had done this but like Natalie Cassidy’s calorie intake it just went higher and higher. My limit was £70 (and not a penny more) but then someone bid £75 and suddenly my limit was £75 (and not a penny more) but then someone bid £80 and I couldn’t stop myself. I told her the good news that I’d found Justin so it would be no trouble for him to collect this sofa since it was only eight miles from the other two.
I rang Justin the next day and told him about the third sofa. He, who didn’t even know me, said I was clearly finding Ebay a little addictive and wondered if there was some health reason why I needed to sit down so much. I gave him the seller’s details and contacted the seller with Justin’s details. He rang later; “That woman with the sofas lived on the fourth floor and there was no lift”. “No! Really?”. He didn’t think he’d be able to come up that afternoon but would be over with all three sofas the next day, Sunday. He called on Sunday to tell me he’d collected the third sofa but wouldn’t be with us until after eight o’clock. Since we had plans to go out I wasn’t pleased by this. I thought about leaving a key somewhere or asking Brian to let Justin put the sofas in the garage but decided that I’d just stay in and wait for him. Justin rang again at five having realised that travelling from London to Leamington Spa and then to another job in Weston-super-Mare that evening was insane. He’d be with us in the morning. So we went out after all. At 8.40am he and his colleague, Adam, appeared with their green recycled biodiesel van, their wild surfer dude hair and our sofas. The sofas looked great. My “Congratulations, you’re a bidding genius” happiness returned. Martin saw us carry them into the house and may, possibly, have wondered why we were buying furniture when we don't have carpet or many working lights or heating. Not an unreasonable thought.
The kids from Grange Hill warned you to ‘Just say No’ to drugs but no one warns you about Ebay. It’s more addictive than heroin and a damned site more expensive. I haven’t looked at the website since my last successful bid but it’s tempting. I've spent more on sofas than Marianna made from selling clothing, bags and shoes made by designers I've never heard of. That wasn't the plan. However, I notice that Ebay now make recommendations based on previous purchases. I may have another look but only with a responsible, supervising adult present.
Orangey
These poor chairs had been surrounded by architects for decades. I rescued them and gave them a good home.
Tuesday, 6 October 2009
Simply Shady
On the sixteenth Martinfinally came over to look at the plans. I spend my life interviewing people and discussing in detail the manner in which they raped or murdered someone so it’s rare for me to classify a conversation as awkward but this one truly was. Even though he kept smiling and making positive noises about how great it would look our plans clearly disappointed him. He said that it was a bigger project than they had hoped and we would remove the view from their landing window, daylight from the kitchen and the morning sunshine from their patio. Despite this he said we should aim to have the house as we wanted it. I just didn’t want that to be achieved at their expense. As an act of appeasement we said that we’d pay for an extra window in their pitched kitchen roof to allow the maximum light in. I felt increasingly lost for words and apologetic. He asked to borrow the plans so he could get a better grasp of what we planned and explain it to Anne. He’d return them the next day. When he left I stood in the garden feeling thoroughly crestfallen and looked at where our new pitched roof would be and where their patio was and for the first time really grasped how much it would impact on them. He actually returned the plans fourteen days later, all smiles and saying he’d forgotten he still had them. Nothing else was said so maybe there isn’t an objection to our plans on the way.
Wednesday, 30 September 2009
Going Underground
In recent weeks we have removed ivy from the outside of the house and last week pulled it down from the interior wall and ceiling. The missing part of the process was the area between the inside ivy and the outisde ivy and this was beneath the dining room floorboards. It was quite easy to remove the boards since a small area had had been removed some decades earlier to install our largely ineffective central heating system. There was a very brief discussion about which one of us would squeeze into this tiny space. It was me. It wasn't at all roomy down there for someone of over six foot but by lying on my stomach and crawling along I got to the corner of the house and was able to pull up the remaining ivy and its roots and then spray weedkiller where it had been in case any roots were in hiding. Reversing myself out of the hole was surprisingly easy since once i'd entered this rather small space I did wonder how i'd get out. Perhaps that was why i was sweating like a paedophile in a playground when i was back on the right side of the floorboards. 
I thought we got to Narnia through the back of a wardrobe?
Under floor gardening
And he was never seen again
Tuesday, 1 September 2009
Beasts of Burden
Am I allowed to moan? Is that allowed when you’ve invited into your life the situation you find yourself in? Living in a derelict house has become quite trying. Life only seems to consist of paid work, working on destroying the house, feeling exhausted and sleeping. Apart from the whole children/grandchildren confusion you have to admire Josef Fritzl’s time management and DIY skills to build an entire apartment beneath his house.
On Tuesday the car began making a noise like a rattling bag of marbles. I asked Martin if he knew of a good garage/mechanic and he recommended a cousin of Anne’s. This is a different cousin to the builder they previously recommended. By Friday the sound coming from the car was more like it was dragging a bicycle (and its rider) behind it. I delivered it to the garage on Friday and then walked to Warwick train station and got a taxi home. I spoke to the cousin on the phone a few times during the week and he didn’t ever seem quite sure if it was a gearbox or clutch problem. He replaced both I think because he didn’t ever decide which one it was. Marianna collected it on Thursday and handed over a cheque for £1249. It now drives as if the cyclist is still hanging on to the bumper only making less noise. We could cope with being carless perfectly well if we’d known that we would be but we’d made plans requiring a car so being carless for six days was frustrating. And my lap top is increasingly temperamental. As is my mobile phone. And I never know where anything is in the house. And I wasn’t looking forward to my week away assessing a teenage rapist, a child porn downloader, an animal molester and a stalker and after working all weekend by Sunday night I was as feeling as irrationally irate as the average Daily Mail reader.
We spent the weekend finishing the demolition of the front bathroom, moving our unpacked boxes into it and the front bedroom and combining both mine and Marianna’s work spaces into the front bedroom. That may be tricky in the future since she maintains that it’s impossible to work alongside me, what with my heavy handed typing style, talking and singing to myself and listening to music on headphones at a volume that is amplified through my skull into other rooms. She’s so unreasonable.
We’ve dismantled the shower apart from one tiled wall where the plumbing was. While I was working away this week Marianna heard a sound at 2am which, after a tour of the house for an intruder, she found to be tiles falling off the shower wall. Like a self-cleaning oven ours has become a self-dismantling house. Our house certainly isn’t self-cleaning though. With all the dismantling it gets dirtier and dirtier. It wouldn’t surprise me one day to find Kim and Aggie at the door, ready to burst into action.
We then emptied the dining room, taking out one of Basil’s cabinets and putting it into the garage for storage and destroying the other and putting it into the skip and also putting his MFI 1973 drinks cabinet into the skip. Then we pulled up the carpet and the usual two layers of underlay. The more we remove the colder the house will become. My clothes had been in the dining room but they’re now split between the hallway, our bedroom and the sitting room. There’ll be lots of opportunities for dawdling pedestrians to see me semi-naked rushing around the house putting an outfit together. When the cabinet was removed we had access to the space between the two areas where ivy had come into the house. Of course, behind the wallpaper there was ivy joining those two areas together. It did appear to be dead though.
I prefer to avoid conversations with our neighbours. They’re always the same.
Them: How are you?
Me: Fine (stressed and tired and surrounded by chaos)
Them: How’s the house?
Me: Oh, getting there (but by the time it’s finished Gary Glitter’s last sexual conquest will be eighteen)
We did see Anne on Sunday afternoon and she asked about the house and the car. She was being lovely and friendly as usual and making offers of help. We mentioned that we’d visit them next weekend to show them the plans for the house and while she kept making noises about how it would all be fine a degree of rigor mortis appeared on her face. That’ll be a meeting to look forward to.
On Tuesday the car began making a noise like a rattling bag of marbles. I asked Martin if he knew of a good garage/mechanic and he recommended a cousin of Anne’s. This is a different cousin to the builder they previously recommended. By Friday the sound coming from the car was more like it was dragging a bicycle (and its rider) behind it. I delivered it to the garage on Friday and then walked to Warwick train station and got a taxi home. I spoke to the cousin on the phone a few times during the week and he didn’t ever seem quite sure if it was a gearbox or clutch problem. He replaced both I think because he didn’t ever decide which one it was. Marianna collected it on Thursday and handed over a cheque for £1249. It now drives as if the cyclist is still hanging on to the bumper only making less noise. We could cope with being carless perfectly well if we’d known that we would be but we’d made plans requiring a car so being carless for six days was frustrating. And my lap top is increasingly temperamental. As is my mobile phone. And I never know where anything is in the house. And I wasn’t looking forward to my week away assessing a teenage rapist, a child porn downloader, an animal molester and a stalker and after working all weekend by Sunday night I was as feeling as irrationally irate as the average Daily Mail reader.
We spent the weekend finishing the demolition of the front bathroom, moving our unpacked boxes into it and the front bedroom and combining both mine and Marianna’s work spaces into the front bedroom. That may be tricky in the future since she maintains that it’s impossible to work alongside me, what with my heavy handed typing style, talking and singing to myself and listening to music on headphones at a volume that is amplified through my skull into other rooms. She’s so unreasonable.
We’ve dismantled the shower apart from one tiled wall where the plumbing was. While I was working away this week Marianna heard a sound at 2am which, after a tour of the house for an intruder, she found to be tiles falling off the shower wall. Like a self-cleaning oven ours has become a self-dismantling house. Our house certainly isn’t self-cleaning though. With all the dismantling it gets dirtier and dirtier. It wouldn’t surprise me one day to find Kim and Aggie at the door, ready to burst into action.
We then emptied the dining room, taking out one of Basil’s cabinets and putting it into the garage for storage and destroying the other and putting it into the skip and also putting his MFI 1973 drinks cabinet into the skip. Then we pulled up the carpet and the usual two layers of underlay. The more we remove the colder the house will become. My clothes had been in the dining room but they’re now split between the hallway, our bedroom and the sitting room. There’ll be lots of opportunities for dawdling pedestrians to see me semi-naked rushing around the house putting an outfit together. When the cabinet was removed we had access to the space between the two areas where ivy had come into the house. Of course, behind the wallpaper there was ivy joining those two areas together. It did appear to be dead though.
I prefer to avoid conversations with our neighbours. They’re always the same.
Them: How are you?
Me: Fine (stressed and tired and surrounded by chaos)
Them: How’s the house?
Me: Oh, getting there (but by the time it’s finished Gary Glitter’s last sexual conquest will be eighteen)
We did see Anne on Sunday afternoon and she asked about the house and the car. She was being lovely and friendly as usual and making offers of help. We mentioned that we’d visit them next weekend to show them the plans for the house and while she kept making noises about how it would all be fine a degree of rigor mortis appeared on her face. That’ll be a meeting to look forward to.
Dead interior ivy
Sunday, 30 August 2009
On the beat, Pete.
On Tuesday, realising who is the decision maker and trouser wearer in the partnership Michael, the architect, rang Marianna to say that the planning officer he'd met with had no objections to our plans and we had the all clear to apply for full plannimng permission. It was great news and a genuine suprise to me that it wouldn't be a non-starter or that the plans would have to be altered radically.
On Thursday we received the first invoice for his fees. It was adressed to Peter Badger. It's encouraging that our architect has such an eye for detail.
On Thursday we received the first invoice for his fees. It was adressed to Peter Badger. It's encouraging that our architect has such an eye for detail.
Saturday, 29 August 2009
Mirror Man
We’ve now hired a skip which was delivered on Thursday. I rang many Skip hire companies but the one whose Yellow Pages advert claimed that they were the cheapest in town turned out to be the cheapest in town. We’ve hired skips before when we lived in Hull and I found the entire experience to be quite distressing because other people would put things in our skip. I was tempted to sleep in it overnight just to avoid the annoyance of going to it in the morning and finding someone else’s mattress or coffee table filling it. That’s not to say that Marianna and I haven’t walked up the street once or twice carrying some item of furniture we no longer wanted and sheepishly slid into it someone else’s skip. Another curiosity is people taking things from your skip, clearly seeing value in items that we no longer did.
The man who delivered our skip was extremely amiable and cleverly reversed his truck into the drive at a tight angle between our fence and Anne’s car. He dropped the skip and then used the truck’s rear bumper to nudge it tight against the fence. “How will you get it out from there?” I asked. “Hopefully, your neighbour’s car won’t be there” he said. “And if it is?” was a question I kept to myself. We’ll cross that bridge when there’s no avoiding it.
The first thing to fill the skip was what was left of the front (porn) bedroom. We firstly removed the bed base (covered in deep shag carpet) and manoeuvred it out of the house and into the skip. Beneath it there was a gift from Basil, a condom. Since its use by date was December 2001 using it would be too much like playing Russian Roulette. We then rolled up sections of the deep shag carpet and two layers of underlay. Curiously, as it was de-porned the room began to look smaller, not bigger. The final job was to remove the mirrored ceiling. The mirrors weren’t actually on the ceiling but secured to a platform which was fixed to the ceiling. Perhaps Basil’s eyesight wasn’t up to much and he needed the mirrors to be a foot closer to him as he lay on the bed in order to get a good view. It appeared to be impenetrably constructed. With the aid of the crowbar one side was removed and brackets holding the mirrors in place were loosened and the mirrors could be slid out. The problem then was how to remove something the size of a dinner table from the ceiling. Logic suggested that it would be best to take it apart as it hung there but Basil had constructed it too well and the only clear way of removing it from the ceiling was all in one go or with a sledge hammer. I stood beneath it ready to take the weight while Marianna was on the step ladder loosening the screws that held the thing to the ceiling. When the last one was loosened the weight of it was quite a surprise (have you ever held a dinner table above your head?) but Marianna then descended the steps and we lowered it to the ground. Great fun. Then we dismantled it. The room looks strangely, horribly bare, like Samson shorn. With every task we manage to make the house look more dilapidated. It’s like an Airfix kit in reverse. We bought it in one piece and we’re slowly taking it apart.
Next we’ll put all of our unpacked boxes in there so we can gut another room.
Our house is no longer noteworthy for being the ugliest house on the street. It’s now the ugly house with the pink skip containing a bed base covered in deep shag pile carpet on the driveway. I've noticed people double-take as they walk by.
The man who delivered our skip was extremely amiable and cleverly reversed his truck into the drive at a tight angle between our fence and Anne’s car. He dropped the skip and then used the truck’s rear bumper to nudge it tight against the fence. “How will you get it out from there?” I asked. “Hopefully, your neighbour’s car won’t be there” he said. “And if it is?” was a question I kept to myself. We’ll cross that bridge when there’s no avoiding it.
The first thing to fill the skip was what was left of the front (porn) bedroom. We firstly removed the bed base (covered in deep shag carpet) and manoeuvred it out of the house and into the skip. Beneath it there was a gift from Basil, a condom. Since its use by date was December 2001 using it would be too much like playing Russian Roulette. We then rolled up sections of the deep shag carpet and two layers of underlay. Curiously, as it was de-porned the room began to look smaller, not bigger. The final job was to remove the mirrored ceiling. The mirrors weren’t actually on the ceiling but secured to a platform which was fixed to the ceiling. Perhaps Basil’s eyesight wasn’t up to much and he needed the mirrors to be a foot closer to him as he lay on the bed in order to get a good view. It appeared to be impenetrably constructed. With the aid of the crowbar one side was removed and brackets holding the mirrors in place were loosened and the mirrors could be slid out. The problem then was how to remove something the size of a dinner table from the ceiling. Logic suggested that it would be best to take it apart as it hung there but Basil had constructed it too well and the only clear way of removing it from the ceiling was all in one go or with a sledge hammer. I stood beneath it ready to take the weight while Marianna was on the step ladder loosening the screws that held the thing to the ceiling. When the last one was loosened the weight of it was quite a surprise (have you ever held a dinner table above your head?) but Marianna then descended the steps and we lowered it to the ground. Great fun. Then we dismantled it. The room looks strangely, horribly bare, like Samson shorn. With every task we manage to make the house look more dilapidated. It’s like an Airfix kit in reverse. We bought it in one piece and we’re slowly taking it apart.
Next we’ll put all of our unpacked boxes in there so we can gut another room.
Our house is no longer noteworthy for being the ugliest house on the street. It’s now the ugly house with the pink skip containing a bed base covered in deep shag pile carpet on the driveway. I've noticed people double-take as they walk by.
Tragically, this was the only time we had this view.
Russian Roulette
"Just hold it up there while i find the camera", said Marianna. Not the first time that phrase had been uttered in Basil's bedroom.
Friday, 28 August 2009
We All Stand Together
The weather was glorious on Sunday so, while other people were wearing bikinis and Speedos and sunning themselves or generally doing more sensible and relaxing things, Marianna and I emptied our pond in preparation for covering it over. The idea of having a pond is nice enough but ours is impractically positioned. It’s just a foot away from the house’s two floor-to-ceiling windows which we intend to replace with folding glass doors and it may be a little risky to have a pond outside of the doors positioned like a Welcome Mat. We began by pulling the many different plants and the buckets they were in out of the pond and leaving them to dry on the patio. We then became aware of how many frogs were in the pond since they began to panic thinking the bailiffs had been and all of their hiding places had gone. Marianna was very concerned about them but not sufficiently concerned to lift them out of the water. I picked them out and sent them in the direction of the people with the children’s paddling pool three doors along but like little kamikaze frogs they kept heading back to our pond. We then emptied the water into the drains and onto the boarders and lawn until we got to a point where it was more sludge than water and so left the last couple of inches in there. Later in the day we put the dried plants into the green waste bin.
By Thursday there were five frogs in the pond. It must have come as a shock to them that the water was now a foot from the paving rather than the inch it had once been.
It rained heavily on Friday and the level of water in the pond was heading back towards the paving.
By Thursday there were five frogs in the pond. It must have come as a shock to them that the water was now a foot from the paving rather than the inch it had once been.
It rained heavily on Friday and the level of water in the pond was heading back towards the paving.
Not a fish pond, a vegetation pond
How beautiful she was the day I met her. Stick with me i told her and you'll smell like a sewer and be covered in pond gunk
Thursday, 27 August 2009
How to be a Zillionaire
I've had a piece of the most amazing good fortune. Just as i was feeling overwhelmed by the expense of the house renovation and wondering how we would find the money my entire financial future has changed. Yesterday I received this email -
Attn: Patrick Bodger
From: Bakr Azmi (bakr_9@msn.com)
Sent: 26 August 2009 12:53:22
To: pbodger@hotmail.co.uk
Dear Patrick Bodger,
With due maximum respect,I crave your indulgence knowing that this my proposal will be a surprise to you.My name is Barr.Bakr Azmi a legal practitioner with A.Bakr & Associates in Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia.
I found your contact/profile some where over the Internet and it gave me the greatest joy,that you are the one I have been looking for.Whom I strongly believe could execute this transaction with me.And being more positive that with your capability,that this transaction of transferring the sum of 17,530,000.00 will be successfully accomplished. My purpose of contacting you is for you to help secure the funds left behind by my late client,to avoid it being confiscated or declared unserviceable by the Finance House.Where this fund valued (17,530,000.00) Seventeen Million, Five hundred and Thirty thousand United State Dollars deposited by my client before his death in Dec 2004.
You might be wondering why am I communicating with you,believe it or not it is simply because you and my late client have the same surname.Though this is coincidental,I strongly believe,you could help me in the task which is the distribution of my late clients funds.And the said funds in the Finance House is considered "UNSERVICEABLE"after my client passed away as there were no indication of next of kin whatsoever that the Institution could consider as a beneficiary for the said funds.
Being my late clients legal adviser,the Institution notified my office,that I need to produce and to contact the next of kin of my deceased client,to either "REACTIVATE" the account or to "MAKE CLAIMS" of the said funds which is carrying a monthly surcharge.
Now,my intention is purely to seek your consent to kindly present you as the legal next of kin/beneficiary to my late client's funds.This would mean that the proceeds of the said funds would be released to you.After the release of the funds to you,we shall then share it mutual,which will be 70% to me and 30% to you.
My office would provide documents to back up your claim.The most important thing I need is your honest/sincere cooperation in this task.And I assure you that this transaction will be legally executed according to the dictates of the law,which will protect you from any infraction of the law.
However,if this business proposition offends your moral ethics,do accept my sincere apology.If on the contrary you wish to achieve this goal with me,kindly get back to me with your interest immediately for further details.
Best regards,
Barr.Bakr Azmi (Esq)
Admittedly, I only end up with $5259000 which, when converted into sterling, is about £57.32 but it should be enough to cover my living expenses for a while. Curiously, I wasn't previously aware of any relatives who had this sort of money or that anyone had died in 2004 or why their money would be in Malaysia but one shouldn't look a gift horse in the arse. Anyway, I'll email a response to good ole Bakr Azmi now to let him know that his proposal does not offend my moral ethics, not that I have any.
Attn: Patrick Bodger
From: Bakr Azmi (bakr_9@msn.com)
Sent: 26 August 2009 12:53:22
To: pbodger@hotmail.co.uk
Dear Patrick Bodger,
With due maximum respect,I crave your indulgence knowing that this my proposal will be a surprise to you.My name is Barr.Bakr Azmi a legal practitioner with A.Bakr & Associates in Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia.
I found your contact/profile some where over the Internet and it gave me the greatest joy,that you are the one I have been looking for.Whom I strongly believe could execute this transaction with me.And being more positive that with your capability,that this transaction of transferring the sum of 17,530,000.00 will be successfully accomplished. My purpose of contacting you is for you to help secure the funds left behind by my late client,to avoid it being confiscated or declared unserviceable by the Finance House.Where this fund valued (17,530,000.00) Seventeen Million, Five hundred and Thirty thousand United State Dollars deposited by my client before his death in Dec 2004.
You might be wondering why am I communicating with you,believe it or not it is simply because you and my late client have the same surname.Though this is coincidental,I strongly believe,you could help me in the task which is the distribution of my late clients funds.And the said funds in the Finance House is considered "UNSERVICEABLE"after my client passed away as there were no indication of next of kin whatsoever that the Institution could consider as a beneficiary for the said funds.
Being my late clients legal adviser,the Institution notified my office,that I need to produce and to contact the next of kin of my deceased client,to either "REACTIVATE" the account or to "MAKE CLAIMS" of the said funds which is carrying a monthly surcharge.
Now,my intention is purely to seek your consent to kindly present you as the legal next of kin/beneficiary to my late client's funds.This would mean that the proceeds of the said funds would be released to you.After the release of the funds to you,we shall then share it mutual,which will be 70% to me and 30% to you.
My office would provide documents to back up your claim.The most important thing I need is your honest/sincere cooperation in this task.And I assure you that this transaction will be legally executed according to the dictates of the law,which will protect you from any infraction of the law.
However,if this business proposition offends your moral ethics,do accept my sincere apology.If on the contrary you wish to achieve this goal with me,kindly get back to me with your interest immediately for further details.
Best regards,
Barr.Bakr Azmi (Esq)
Admittedly, I only end up with $5259000 which, when converted into sterling, is about £57.32 but it should be enough to cover my living expenses for a while. Curiously, I wasn't previously aware of any relatives who had this sort of money or that anyone had died in 2004 or why their money would be in Malaysia but one shouldn't look a gift horse in the arse. Anyway, I'll email a response to good ole Bakr Azmi now to let him know that his proposal does not offend my moral ethics, not that I have any.
Monday, 24 August 2009
The Brakes
Here are two sentences that may appear to have very little in common.
I really like football.
and
I spent much of the ‘70’s, ‘80’s and ‘90’s watching Wisbech Town Football Club.
It was probably when I was aged seven or eight that I first accompanied my dad and brothers to Fenland Park to watch The Fenmen, as Wisbech town are nicknamed. It seemed that they fielded the same team for much of the next two decades that I attended. I saw them win the league one season and beat clubs they were expected to lose to in the FA Cup or FA Vase but mostly watching them week in and week out was a festival of disappointment. This is not the beautiful game of Arsenal and Liverpool. Football at this level is a little more basic. It’s not Bach or Mozart it’s Saturday night Karaoke at The Nags Head. I’ve seen many First Division and Premiership matches and know the difference. Perhaps that’s the point. People go to watch lower league football because it’s a group of people just like them doing something they could feasibly do. When you watch Thierry Henry that just isn’t the case. Also, football on the television and live football are completely different things. I realised this the first time I saw Peter Beardsley playing for Liverpool. It’s a commentator’s cliché but he ran for the entire length of the game and covered every inch of the pitch and made a contribution to the team and the game that was never apparent when I’d seen the team play on television. The experience and the players at huge stadiums can all seem a little distant though. I recently saw Marti Pellow sing at a theatre that seated only 250 people. Even if you were leaning against the back wall your view would be as perfect as the sound was. I now want to watch every musician or band play in that venue, even if it’s The Rolling Stones. Perhaps all of those years at Fenland Park taught me to love the intimacy of lower league football. Or mediocrity.
An important part of the live football experience is the crowd, the chants and the interaction between the crowd and the players. At Fenland Park I always stood in the same place, in the same stand, surrounded by the same people making the same jokes and the same criticisms of the players and opposition. The jokes were so bad sometimes you couldn’t help but laugh. You also laughed because of the familiarity of the same jokes being repeated each week. Unfortunately, at Wisbech there was occasionally the nastiness of racism too. Since there was no ethnic diversity in the town there was a fear of difference and this was unpleasantly projected at visiting black players. Les Ferdinand, who played there once, has said it’s the worst place he ever played at. Not good. Wisbech didn’t have a great reputation. This largely wasn’t because of the genuine supporters though. A certain element came out of the woodwork for the bigger games. There was a small riot after an FA Cup game in about 1985. There wasn’t any riot police intervention to put and end to this although there was a police presence. I remember watching the crowd rocking a Police van with all of the officers inside it. The jokes and banter can also be found at the bigger games. Barry Venison may well have been a very successful, and possibly talented, player for Liverpool and Newcastle but I can’t be the only person who thinks of him as a man with a bleached blonde mullet and nothing more. I was among the Arsenal supporters, and supporting Liverpool, at Highbury on one early ‘90’s occasion when Mr Venison was playing for Liverpool. “Venison!”, “Venison!” shouted an Arsenal supporter close to me when Barry came close to us. He ignored the first couple. “Venison!”, “Venison!” and Barry turned around towards the man addressing him. “You’re shit!!” the man then shouted and our small area of the crowd cheered. I wondered why he would fall for that when he’d been playing for so many years and must have been taunted similarly before. Did he think this random man in the crowd was going to pass on a message from his mother? In the second half the shout came from the crowd again; “Venison!”, “Venison!”. Again, he ignored it but after several more he again turned towards the man addressing him. “Your hair’s shit!!” he shouted. He’d fallen for the same trick twice within 90 minutes. The reason why he’d fallen for it was clear. He was an idiot.
While we lived in Hull the football club enjoyed their most successful period ever but I didn’t go and see them. I followed them in the local paper and listened for discussions about the team and manager on the local radio station and was overjoyed when they were promoted to the premiership but still didn’t ever go and watch a game. It was only when we moved to Leamington Spa, with its tiny, minor league football team that I felt it was time to return to watching live games. On Saturday they played their second home game but this was the first I was able to attend.
I knew it would be an interesting experience having already noted from the Leamington FC website that the ground wasn’t actually in Leamington and their head office was in Stratford but I wasn’t prepared for my SatNav to deliver me to a spot surrounded by fields that was actually a mile from the ground. I rang the club to find out where they might be hiding. “No, no, my friend a SatNav won’t get you here. I can tell you exactly where you are right now”, the man answering the phone said as if I were the 48th lost caller that day. I didn’t tell him that I knew where I was it was where he was that I was keen to discover but he swiftly delivered some surprisingly accurate directions that largely involved me looking upwards to see the floodlights on the horizon.
I arrived in time, paid my entrance fee, bought a programme and joined 765 others to watch the match. It was like the Wisbech Town play only with different actors saying the lines since I was in a group of men in their fifties and sixties making jokes and criticisms and shouting abuse at the linesman. The crowd seemed to be largely made up of the cognitively and socially impaired, allowed out without the supervision of their carer or probation officer for a couple of hours so I felt nicely at home. During the match announcements came over the tanoy that a mobile phone had been found and later a pair of spectacles. They were a forgetful bunch. I was a little concerned that so little of the ground (The New Windmill) is under cover which may make for some chilly experiences in a few months time. Leamington scored quite early in the match and then decided to play like a group of men who’d never met before let alone trained and played together and so invited Banbury United to equalise and then take the lead. It was all very familiar. Just like at Wisbech at half time the fans who stood behind the goals changed ends. You don’t get that when Chelsea play Villa. At half-time the results of a raffle were announced. The prize was a scratchcard. So, not actually a prize but the chance to win a prize. In the 65th minute a player I’m fairly confident was called Marcus Jackson was the victim of a pretty innocuous foul and a free-kick was awarded. While the manager was still screaming at the Ref that he should have played an advantage Leamington scored. The manager was now clearly unsure if he should continue to protest or celebrate. Banbury quickly changed to an unorthodox attacking 3-3-4 formation and within two minutes conceded another goal and Leamington (The Brakes) took the lead. What excitement. Since football matches should last for 90 minutes Leamington played for only that length of time and stopped trying during injury time and, tragically, Banbury equalised (3-3) in the 92nd minute.
I’ll go again.
I really like football.
and
I spent much of the ‘70’s, ‘80’s and ‘90’s watching Wisbech Town Football Club.
It was probably when I was aged seven or eight that I first accompanied my dad and brothers to Fenland Park to watch The Fenmen, as Wisbech town are nicknamed. It seemed that they fielded the same team for much of the next two decades that I attended. I saw them win the league one season and beat clubs they were expected to lose to in the FA Cup or FA Vase but mostly watching them week in and week out was a festival of disappointment. This is not the beautiful game of Arsenal and Liverpool. Football at this level is a little more basic. It’s not Bach or Mozart it’s Saturday night Karaoke at The Nags Head. I’ve seen many First Division and Premiership matches and know the difference. Perhaps that’s the point. People go to watch lower league football because it’s a group of people just like them doing something they could feasibly do. When you watch Thierry Henry that just isn’t the case. Also, football on the television and live football are completely different things. I realised this the first time I saw Peter Beardsley playing for Liverpool. It’s a commentator’s cliché but he ran for the entire length of the game and covered every inch of the pitch and made a contribution to the team and the game that was never apparent when I’d seen the team play on television. The experience and the players at huge stadiums can all seem a little distant though. I recently saw Marti Pellow sing at a theatre that seated only 250 people. Even if you were leaning against the back wall your view would be as perfect as the sound was. I now want to watch every musician or band play in that venue, even if it’s The Rolling Stones. Perhaps all of those years at Fenland Park taught me to love the intimacy of lower league football. Or mediocrity.
An important part of the live football experience is the crowd, the chants and the interaction between the crowd and the players. At Fenland Park I always stood in the same place, in the same stand, surrounded by the same people making the same jokes and the same criticisms of the players and opposition. The jokes were so bad sometimes you couldn’t help but laugh. You also laughed because of the familiarity of the same jokes being repeated each week. Unfortunately, at Wisbech there was occasionally the nastiness of racism too. Since there was no ethnic diversity in the town there was a fear of difference and this was unpleasantly projected at visiting black players. Les Ferdinand, who played there once, has said it’s the worst place he ever played at. Not good. Wisbech didn’t have a great reputation. This largely wasn’t because of the genuine supporters though. A certain element came out of the woodwork for the bigger games. There was a small riot after an FA Cup game in about 1985. There wasn’t any riot police intervention to put and end to this although there was a police presence. I remember watching the crowd rocking a Police van with all of the officers inside it. The jokes and banter can also be found at the bigger games. Barry Venison may well have been a very successful, and possibly talented, player for Liverpool and Newcastle but I can’t be the only person who thinks of him as a man with a bleached blonde mullet and nothing more. I was among the Arsenal supporters, and supporting Liverpool, at Highbury on one early ‘90’s occasion when Mr Venison was playing for Liverpool. “Venison!”, “Venison!” shouted an Arsenal supporter close to me when Barry came close to us. He ignored the first couple. “Venison!”, “Venison!” and Barry turned around towards the man addressing him. “You’re shit!!” the man then shouted and our small area of the crowd cheered. I wondered why he would fall for that when he’d been playing for so many years and must have been taunted similarly before. Did he think this random man in the crowd was going to pass on a message from his mother? In the second half the shout came from the crowd again; “Venison!”, “Venison!”. Again, he ignored it but after several more he again turned towards the man addressing him. “Your hair’s shit!!” he shouted. He’d fallen for the same trick twice within 90 minutes. The reason why he’d fallen for it was clear. He was an idiot.
While we lived in Hull the football club enjoyed their most successful period ever but I didn’t go and see them. I followed them in the local paper and listened for discussions about the team and manager on the local radio station and was overjoyed when they were promoted to the premiership but still didn’t ever go and watch a game. It was only when we moved to Leamington Spa, with its tiny, minor league football team that I felt it was time to return to watching live games. On Saturday they played their second home game but this was the first I was able to attend.
I knew it would be an interesting experience having already noted from the Leamington FC website that the ground wasn’t actually in Leamington and their head office was in Stratford but I wasn’t prepared for my SatNav to deliver me to a spot surrounded by fields that was actually a mile from the ground. I rang the club to find out where they might be hiding. “No, no, my friend a SatNav won’t get you here. I can tell you exactly where you are right now”, the man answering the phone said as if I were the 48th lost caller that day. I didn’t tell him that I knew where I was it was where he was that I was keen to discover but he swiftly delivered some surprisingly accurate directions that largely involved me looking upwards to see the floodlights on the horizon.
I arrived in time, paid my entrance fee, bought a programme and joined 765 others to watch the match. It was like the Wisbech Town play only with different actors saying the lines since I was in a group of men in their fifties and sixties making jokes and criticisms and shouting abuse at the linesman. The crowd seemed to be largely made up of the cognitively and socially impaired, allowed out without the supervision of their carer or probation officer for a couple of hours so I felt nicely at home. During the match announcements came over the tanoy that a mobile phone had been found and later a pair of spectacles. They were a forgetful bunch. I was a little concerned that so little of the ground (The New Windmill) is under cover which may make for some chilly experiences in a few months time. Leamington scored quite early in the match and then decided to play like a group of men who’d never met before let alone trained and played together and so invited Banbury United to equalise and then take the lead. It was all very familiar. Just like at Wisbech at half time the fans who stood behind the goals changed ends. You don’t get that when Chelsea play Villa. At half-time the results of a raffle were announced. The prize was a scratchcard. So, not actually a prize but the chance to win a prize. In the 65th minute a player I’m fairly confident was called Marcus Jackson was the victim of a pretty innocuous foul and a free-kick was awarded. While the manager was still screaming at the Ref that he should have played an advantage Leamington scored. The manager was now clearly unsure if he should continue to protest or celebrate. Banbury quickly changed to an unorthodox attacking 3-3-4 formation and within two minutes conceded another goal and Leamington (The Brakes) took the lead. What excitement. Since football matches should last for 90 minutes Leamington played for only that length of time and stopped trying during injury time and, tragically, Banbury equalised (3-3) in the 92nd minute.
I’ll go again.
Friday, 21 August 2009
Plans
Michael returned last Wednesday. This time he brought plans rather than sketches. As soon as he entered the house he mentioned the smell of damp which he had previously noticed but not mentioned. I’ve always thought the smell to be more like a rabbit’s hutch than normal damp. The house is like a sponge. No matter how much we clean or how many air fresheners we scatter around the house there is always more dirt and smell to be squeezed out of it. Our worry is that this is now our smell. In the same way that smokers always smell of tobacco the pair of us go about our business smelling like the floor of a rabbit's hutch.
The plans were great. Either they were clearer than the previous sketches or I’d undergone some sort of cognitive shift over the preceding week. It was suddenly obvious that the first floor extension would look great and would complete the house in a way that a ground floor extension alone wouldn’t. Part of what convinced me was seeing before and after photographs of the house up the street. He really had turned a sow's ear into a silk purse. Marianna grinned and enthused and congratulated Michael on his work and I breathed a sigh of relief. Half a second later I began to worry about how much it will cost. He pointed out that it could all be done three times quicker if we moved out and I wondered what the cost of that might be too. “Maybe I shouldn’t say this” he began and Marianna grimaced. I assumed it would be another pessimistic comment about the expense but he said “but I think we’ve got a really good chance of getting planning permission granted”. The next step for him is that he has an informal meeting with a planning officer to give an indication if we might get permission and then, if the signs are good, we apply for the full planning permission. Next step for us is that we need to schmooze our neighbours, especially Martin and Anne, and see how they feel about having a building site next door for a few months and losing some light into their house. Martin seems very amiable and laid back but there’s a slightly more rebellious side to him. I’ve noticed that when he wants to pull out of his driveway and there isn’t a gap in the traffic he drives along the pavement until one appears.
Marianna’s sister, Stella, arrived from Athens on Friday for an extended weekend of shopping. She hated the house and didn’t even venture further than the doorway of some rooms. She said it would look lovely when it was finished and maybe she wouldn’t be staying again before then. I don’t know how TKMaxx and Primark will survive the drop in sales.
The plans were great. Either they were clearer than the previous sketches or I’d undergone some sort of cognitive shift over the preceding week. It was suddenly obvious that the first floor extension would look great and would complete the house in a way that a ground floor extension alone wouldn’t. Part of what convinced me was seeing before and after photographs of the house up the street. He really had turned a sow's ear into a silk purse. Marianna grinned and enthused and congratulated Michael on his work and I breathed a sigh of relief. Half a second later I began to worry about how much it will cost. He pointed out that it could all be done three times quicker if we moved out and I wondered what the cost of that might be too. “Maybe I shouldn’t say this” he began and Marianna grimaced. I assumed it would be another pessimistic comment about the expense but he said “but I think we’ve got a really good chance of getting planning permission granted”. The next step for him is that he has an informal meeting with a planning officer to give an indication if we might get permission and then, if the signs are good, we apply for the full planning permission. Next step for us is that we need to schmooze our neighbours, especially Martin and Anne, and see how they feel about having a building site next door for a few months and losing some light into their house. Martin seems very amiable and laid back but there’s a slightly more rebellious side to him. I’ve noticed that when he wants to pull out of his driveway and there isn’t a gap in the traffic he drives along the pavement until one appears.
Marianna’s sister, Stella, arrived from Athens on Friday for an extended weekend of shopping. She hated the house and didn’t even venture further than the doorway of some rooms. She said it would look lovely when it was finished and maybe she wouldn’t be staying again before then. I don’t know how TKMaxx and Primark will survive the drop in sales.
Thursday, 6 August 2009
Indecision
Last Wednesday Michael came over to show us the plans, ideas and sketches that he’d come up with for the house. He was rather excited that, having previously said it wasn’t an option, he now thought it was possible that we could have a first floor extension above the garage. This would follow a similar, pitched roof, design to the one he designed for the people five doors along from us. He was also aware, as we had been since looking in the estate agent’s window on Saturday, that their house is for sale for two thirds more than we bought our house for. For Michael this meant that, since their house is smaller than ours, we could spend all of this difference on our house and still be in profit. He’s deluded and working on a very different budget to me. He confirmed this when he mentioned that the kitchen in his home cost £40,000. That’s several thousand more than my first house cost. Despite this I was intrigued that the first floor was again a possibility and Marianna was very excited by the idea. However, during the meeting I became concerned that it wasn’t ever our first option and with the pitched roof and me being six foot one (and a bit) I’d have two rooms much of which I couldn’t stand up in. I also worry about our building taking daylight out of Martin and Anne's house. All we could do now though was let him investigate the possibility of the first floor extension since it’s quite likely that we won’t get the planning permission granted. I must have been looking pretty virile the last time we met since he'd arbitrarily labelled one of the rooms in the extension 'Nursery'. We chose him over the other architect applicants because he came up with some good ideas when we first met and he’d sketched out some of these; including having an alcove with cupboards just inside the front door and removing the wall which separates the kitchen from the sitting room. We dismissed all of these though apart from extending the downstairs toilet into the space below the stairs. Marianna came up with many ideas, especially for rearranging the second floor rooms and having a ‘Jack and Jill’ door system. Roles have now been established; we come up with ideas and he tells us how unrealistic they are. There was also a lot of discussion about moving the first floor stairs. He didn’t think this could be done as it had been done in Becky’s house but, since Marianna remained very keen on this, he said he’d give it more thought. The worst bit of news was that it could take five months to get all of the planning permission sorted out. This was the meeting for making final decisions. We didn’t. We made a date to meet again.
Marianna and I discussed the plans over the following days. She drew new ideas and we marked the floors with sticky tape for where walls and furniture might be. However, when Michael knocked at the door again five days later we still hadn’t reached a decision about the first floor extension. We had hoped to visit the people five doors along and have another look at their place but they appeared to be on holiday. Or hiding from us. We had, though, made decisions for a version of the house without the first floor although these changed again when they were discussed with Michael. At one point during our discussions one of the squirrels appeared in the garden and was chased up a tree by next door’s cat. Michael commented that he put traps out for squirrels in his garden. I didn’t ask what he did with them once they'd been caught. Use the meat for kebabs? Use the fur for merkins? As we discussed extending the house for children we don’t have and guests that may never visit I think we were tiring him a bit and he offered the opinion that we should have lived in the house for at least a year before we did anything to it. We reminded him about the sockets and lights that don’t work, and the plumbing and the heating and that none of the windows are airtight. He was a bit quiet after that. I was able to visualise the house with a ground floor extension but was struggling to visualise it with the pitched roof. The more we discussed it the more my head and the world began to spin. Did I want a project this big? My idea of a project is to alphabetise my CD’s. This was the meeting for making final decisions. We didn’t. We made a date to meet again.
Marianna and I discussed the plans over the following days. She drew new ideas and we marked the floors with sticky tape for where walls and furniture might be. However, when Michael knocked at the door again five days later we still hadn’t reached a decision about the first floor extension. We had hoped to visit the people five doors along and have another look at their place but they appeared to be on holiday. Or hiding from us. We had, though, made decisions for a version of the house without the first floor although these changed again when they were discussed with Michael. At one point during our discussions one of the squirrels appeared in the garden and was chased up a tree by next door’s cat. Michael commented that he put traps out for squirrels in his garden. I didn’t ask what he did with them once they'd been caught. Use the meat for kebabs? Use the fur for merkins? As we discussed extending the house for children we don’t have and guests that may never visit I think we were tiring him a bit and he offered the opinion that we should have lived in the house for at least a year before we did anything to it. We reminded him about the sockets and lights that don’t work, and the plumbing and the heating and that none of the windows are airtight. He was a bit quiet after that. I was able to visualise the house with a ground floor extension but was struggling to visualise it with the pitched roof. The more we discussed it the more my head and the world began to spin. Did I want a project this big? My idea of a project is to alphabetise my CD’s. This was the meeting for making final decisions. We didn’t. We made a date to meet again.
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