The Home Improvement Show

It’s been a busy week but somehow I found the time to turn forty. I’d known this was going to happen on March 17th 2010 for some time but it still came as quite a shock. After working through Thursday night on a report and having ninety minutes sleep on Friday afternoon we went to see the thoroughly brilliant Dave Gorman. I saw a client this morning and then met Marianna at the NEC for the Home Improvement Show. You may wonder why we went and lesser people than you and I might struggle to see how it was different from the Grand Designs show we visited last year. It’s just that that’s what we do. We talk about windows and doors, bathrooms, types of tile, types of insulation, types of radiator, showers, our neighbour’s guttering, RSJ’s, the colour of kitchen units etc etc and then we go to these shows to talk about these things with other people. Doesn’t everyone? When I arrived at about 12.15 Marianna had already been there since the doors opened at ten but we managed to stay until after three. The first task for me, having risen early and missed an entire night’s sleep in the last three days, was to visit the canteen and re-energise myself with something involving pasta and spinach that looked like road kill. Then we explored the half of the exhibition that Marianna had thus far neglected. I think we more focused than at the Grand Designs show and largely sought to finally answer what we want our doors and window frames made from, what design of radiator we’d like and how we’d like to insulate the house. A man spoke to us at length about a type of insulation that is pumped into the walls. It was only at the end that he revealed that these would be false walls built onto our existing internal walls, thus shrinking the rooms. I think not. Martin is already trying to shrink my garage. I’m all for a well insulated house but God invented pullovers so I wouldn’t have to tolerate such nonsense as having false walls just for a little extra insulation. Some of those attending must have a different budget to me unless the people selling the £3000 garage door and the bath with the television that rises from the tap end made no sales at all. Marianna had clearly made an impression in the morning since every exhibitor that we spoke to that she had seen earlier in the day greeted her like an old friend before re-enacting their earlier conversation for my benefit. This exhibition lacked the genuine celebrities that Grand Designs had. It was Dancing on Ice compared to the Strictly Come Dancing of Grand Designs Live. When the lack of sleep was really getting the better of me we left and I went home for a late afternoon nap. That’s what people in their forties do.

The return of Mr Grey

A quote from T & J Grey just over 20% over our current budget. That's a lot of money. What has become of John Engand and Andy Graham who guaranteed to have a quote with us six days ago?

First Past The Post

We had our first quote arrive from Max At Signal Construction yesterday. It was 8.6% on top of the budget which was just fine for me. Next!

Penthouse and Pavement

It’s been a tiring week. Monday morning began with me doing my Mr Angry impression at Kwikfit. My slow puncture and I had visited there on Saturday and I left assured that it had been fixed. However, on Monday morning it was softer than a Dali watch. Fuelled by an excess of middle class rage I inflated it, to some degree, with a foot pump and returned there. I had better places to be so I left them in no doubt how unimpressed I was. I was intending to head South early in the day but didn’t because of the sixteen year old I allowed to fix my tyre on Saturday.

When Marianna returned from work in the evening we went to visit Martin. A week or so ago he had requested a chat with Malcolm to discuss the gutter problem prior to signing the party wall agreement and we went to see what became of the chat and if he was now ready to sign. Marianna and I have slightly different approaches to negotiation. If we were boxers I would initially dance around the ring, weighing up my opponent, throwing a few jabs. However, Marianna would rush to the centre of the ring and throw her best punch hoping for a knockout. My problem with this is that if the opponent doesn’t then fall to the floor you’re in trouble. This became apparent during our brief discussion with Martin. Her strategy is normally highly effective. She is a highly skilled haggler and once secured a kitchen for us at 17% of the price at which negotiations began but something a little gentler appeared necessary for this meeting. Martin had not only chatted with Malcolm but had met with him. Marianna wasn’t pleased that we hadn’t been present and made this clear to Martin. He told us they had agreed that our garage would shrink by four inches and Malcolm was going to make some drawings of this. Marianna wasn’t pleased about this and made this clear to Martin. Very clear. I said we would speak to Malcolm and wait to see the drawings and we left. When she spoke to Malcolm the next day he said that he had expected us to be at the meeting, had found it particularly uncomfortable and found Martin to be extremely persistent with his ideas. He had told Martin that if our garage shrank it would be by two inches at the very most. He will make some new drawings and let us have them. Marianna has also informally sought some legal advice and learnt that Martin’s roof and guttering is effectively trespassing on our property. We would be within our rights to pop next door and ask him to remove it.

Then I went off on tour, working in Basildon on Tuesday, Portsmouth on Wednesday, Gillingham in Dorset on Thursday and Wolverhampton on Friday.

I was back at home Thursday evening. At eight on Friday morning we had a visit from Andy Graham and his surveyor, electrician and plumber. The surveyor was wearing a very nice suit and overcoat but looked like he’d been wearing these clothes since Monday. He was very stubbly and appeared slightly bewildered. It could appear cruel and judgemental to use the word hung-over but he reminded me of Dan Ackroyd in ‘Trading Places’ after the trade. Andy himself smelt of last night’s alcohol and had clearly been to a local hostelry the previous night and become slightly over-refreshed. He regaled his colleagues with tales of Basil Bailey and our house. “You’d have loved to have met him” he told them. “If only we had a carpet covered Ouija board” I said. Confused looks greeted this comment and Andy gave me a look of social exclusion the likes of which I hadn’t seen since school. Regardless, I feel that I should be in charge of jokes about porn and carpets since I have little else to offer these interactions; ‘What sort of lights would you like?’ the electrician might ask. ‘Some of those bright ones that make the darkness much easier to negotiate?’ I might, quite seriously, reply. It occurred to me whilst Andy told them of the legend that was Basil that we could get a blue plaque on the front of the house when it’s finished; “Basil Bailey - Eccentric, layer of carpets, hanger of mirrors and serial shagger lived and decorated here. 1950 – 2007”. Andy is something of a raconteur and also told us of his meeting with the members of Heaven 17 before and after their gig at The Assembly the night before. He told it as if the band were as excited to meet him as he was to meet them. I’m rapidly forming the opinion that he may be a little too narcissistic for my taste. All the usual jokes and comments were made about the house by the electrician and plumber as they wandered around. I spoke to the electrician whilst Marianna gave the plumber the tour. She was fascinated that his eyes were different colours. I see it as a flaw in her personality that she didn’t point this out to me while he was still in the house. Having made their comments off they went in their lifeboats leaving us on the deck, iceberg in the background; “I’ll see you in New York”. Then our second, much bigger than the first, skip was delivered.

It may seem that we are now in the world of the super rich but this morning Marianna met/interviewed Anthony the gardener whose details she had found in a shop window. He’s going to dedicate some time over the coming months to taming the wilderness that is our garden since I envisage spending most of my time with or writing about rapists and murderers.

Jon Venables

Am I now living in the village near Frankenstein’s castle, watching the torch bearing villagers gathering at the gates? Is public opinion and government policy a feather in the wind blown by the red top tabloids and the extremist Daily Mail? I haven’t read about the James Bulger/Jon Venables case this week so I don’t have any great knowledge. If I’d read every single newspaper article I’d have no greater ‘knowledge’ anyway. This isn’t about murder or how evil someone is it’s about the way in which news is constructed. Several years ago I worked with a prisoner who committed a double murder on the day of a major national news event. The papers that day and week were full of this major event and so my client’s murder of an adult and child only made his local paper. Had he committed this murder on any other day he’d have made the front page that day and the next day and the next. Is he less evil than Jon Venables or just less newsworthy? If James Bulger had disappeared on 31st August 1997 or 11th September 2001 we may never have heard of him, Jon Venables or Robert Thompson. It’s sad but a fact that other children have been killed, other children have committed murder and other offenders have been recalled for breaching the conditions of their licence. Lots of them. I get to meet them all the time. We should clearly give up on the nonsense of rehabilitation and just think of people as Good or Bad, Evil or Fit to wander the streets. Then we’ll bring back hanging. We’ll start with murderers and those who commit GBH because clearly they have the potential, paedophiles obviously and it would be unfair not to include other sex offenders. Who next? It worries me how, without a hint of irony, this evil and violent man brings out such violence in others. How awful must your life have been that you kill someone when you’re so young?

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000755798907&ref=pymk#!/pages/Yes-Jon-Venebles-back-where-he-belongs-in-prison-Stay-in-there-you-scum/380299093905

XLNT

Today Max’s estimating team were going to visit. He arrived in a 2009 Mercedes that was the size of Sussex and was then joined by his estimator who seemed more elderly and confused than Max had seemed when we first met. We were then joined by the plumber and electrician. “Hello, I’m the plumber, Peter”. This was a very carefully constructed sentence so that he didn’t present himself as Peter the Plumber and sound like one of Postman Pat’s friends. Next came the electrician. “I’m the electrician” he said. “Patrick” I said shaking his hand. “I’m the electrician” he said. I felt all of the muscles in my face twinge as I was tempted to ask if his name was a secret for some reason but just ushered him in. Perhaps it’s an assigned Red Indian name like Dances with Wolves. After a brief discussion by the four real men and me describing to Peter and ‘Electrician’ how inadequate the plumbing, heating, electrics and lighting were they took themselves off for a tour of the house. As I spoke to Max I could hear them laughing at our red nose wearing, baggy trouser dropping festival of a house. Bloody cheek. I joined them in the hallway to receive their comments about the house. Peter had a grey moptop hairstyle circa Beatles 1965 and was extremely likeable. He didn’t think that much of our plumbing was salvageable and was confused that we have a type of radiator normally found in old peoples homes which give out limited heat so that the old dears don’t burn their hands. ‘Electrician’ was very quiet apart from pointing out to Peter that most of our lights are on the floor and asking me if I’d like them a little higher when replaced.

This evening we had a visit from Andy Graham whose company is called XLNT. I do have some concerns about a man who’d name his company like a boyband or with the spelling of a twelve year old sending a text. He looked like a third rate rock star whose good looks couldn’t keep pace with his substance abuse but had the presence and confidence of Jose Mourinho. The special one had arrived. His first words, after introductions, were “This is Basil Bailey’s house”. He’d known Basil’s nephew as a child, had visited the house then and also done some work for Basil in his twenties. "This house was the cutting edge back in the day" he said. "Well, this is cutting edge plus forty years" I said. He described Basil as an eccentric, which would be fair and told us that Basil’s furniture business went bust about twenty yeas ago. He didn’t have a business card but gave us a Cd-Rom. I could try this with a disc containing a montage of Crimewatch reconstructions from cases I've worked on. Well, he didn’t actually say it was a cd-rom. He said “I don’t have business cards. You can have this” and handed the disk over. Since I’m at the shallow end of the social competency learning curve I said “Ooh, I love a compilation CD. Any Phil Collins?”. He looked at the plans, was impressed by them and asked some brief questions and made an appointment to return with his surveyor next week. Marianna doing all the talking didn’t deter him from maintaining steely, man-bonding eye contact with me over the top of his spectacles. I’m just dipping my elbow into the tepid bathwaters of manliness so did my best to match this. He had recently returned from Florida and was going skiing in Italy this weekend. It’s always nice to know the lifestyle I may be supporting.

www.xlnt2.com

Max

Max, today’s candidate, arrived in a van with the company name on its side and initially reminded me of a slightly bemused grandparent. However, in a fairly quiet and assured manner he really knew what he was talking about. He reviewed the plans and while he did so I noticed that he had almost no fingernails. I didn’t know if this had occurred through chewing, being accident prone or some medical condition but once I’d spotted this I was transfixed and could barely make eye contact with him. Because I’m remarkably mature I managed not to shout “Wow, look, you’ve got no fingernails”. Just like Neat and Precise Terry he also wanted his plumber, electrician and others to visit to assist him in calculating the costs. Max forced his way into first place by uttering the phrase “That’s no problem, we’ll use a boxed gutter” when we mentioned the infamous Martin/gutter/overhang issue. He wasn’t bothered about looking around the house but did so briefly.