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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Gardeners

Since the vine had penetrated the bricks at the front of the house and neighbour Becky had told us that at the back it was going under the flat roof it had to be removed at the back too. Marianna thought that it might save us some time to get a professional gardener to come and deal with it. Last Sunday the first professional came to give us a quote. He was aged about nineteen and probably working within restrictions set by an ASBO. He quoted £180 and when we said we were getting a second quote later in the week this suddenly dropped to £150. We said we’d let him know.

On Thursday a second gardener came. He had a notebook and made notes while I was pointing out where we had ivy and would like to not have ivy. What was there to write? Anyway, he quoted £475. I’ve had holidays that cost me less. He pointed out that this included a discount though for what I’m not sure. I told him that we’d be getting a second quote and he told me that anyone who quoted less than £300 was a cowboy and that he’d been in gardening for 20 years and had undertaken 1500 vine removals. I tried to work out 1500 multiplied by £475 and wondered why he hadn’t retired. I said I’d let him know.

That evening the two of us began removing the ivy and continued with this work on Saturday morning. I’d estimate that we’ve done 90% of it so far and have probably spent 4 hours on it. That’s a hell of a good hourly rate for the 'professional' gardeners. I may change career. The only noteworthy incident during our ivy clearance was that behind a section near the guttering Marianna found Basil’s credit card screwed to the wall.

On Saturday when it was raining and we couldn’t work on the ivy we finished gutting the front bathroom, especially dismantling the shower. We’re limited in what we can remove without tackling plumbing or electrics. When that was done we removed the fitted wardrobes in the front bedroom.

I was feeling rather overwhelmed by it all at the weekend. Overwhelmed by work and constantly rushing from one task and place in the country to another, tired of being surrounded by chaos everywhere in the house and deflated that we’re living in a house which doesn’t always feel fit to live in. I have untouched personal and professional 'Things to do' lists and the one for the house is endless. The space between my ears feels as chaotic as the space within these walls. There must be cheaper ways to have a nervous breakdown. Last Wednesday our kitchen lights suddenly stopped working. It seemed to happen as water boiled over from a pan on the hob. I opened the cupboard beneath the stairs to check the fuses and the lights came back on. Could the hinges on the cupboard door be linked to our kitchen lights? In this house it is possible. I discovered that the fuses for everything in the kitchen are separate from the other fuses and are right beneath the hob. But it doesn't seem to be the fuses causing the problem. The lights came and went again on Thursday but died for good on Friday. We can prepare food during the day or have the fridge door open and hope that its light will reach across the room.

We took turns working on the shower

and took turns photographing each other working on the shower

My Parents Visit

My parents visited the weekend before last. It was their first visit to us since we moved to the midlands. They said they’d be leaving their home at 8.30 but I wasn’t surprised to get a text at 7.45 saying that they were then leaving. I wasn’t surprised either later when they said they'd been kicking their heels for some time waiting to leave at 7.45. They brought an old chair for us to increase our sitting options by a third. I lifted it out of my dad's car and put it just inside the front door. It's still there. It seems pointless to put it in front of the tv that only has one channel. As soon as they arrived we went straight into a tour of the house. Since we’ve removed the hand rail on the stairs they ascended on all fours. Much to my surprise they really liked the house. My dad likes to play it safe and if buying a house would opt for a brand new one, not one that needed work in every part of every room but he could see the potential that we’d seen when we’d first viewed it although he did have some concerns about the cost of the entire project. I think because we presented as calm about it he was reassured. We’d booked them into a hotel because of the state of the house so after re-fuelling them with several very strong cups of tea we delivered their car to their hotel and then went for a wander around Leamington. Like a couple of five year olds they were full of questions; What’s the name of the river? Why is it called Royal Leamington Spa? Why is there a statue of Queen Victoria in front of the town hall? We didn’t know the answers to any of these so had to read the little plaques and signs around the town. We found an advert for guided historical tours of the town during the summer evenings. We should sign up. My dad moves a little slower these days and my mum’s poor hearing and memory make for a lot of repetition. She asked Marianna five times if her parents had visited us here yet and she asked me the same thing about my nephew twice. Although as proof that my memory is no better I don’t recall what that question was. We stopped in Jephson park for more strong tea and they resisted Marianna's encouragement to return to the hotel for a nap and then the three of them engaged in their favourite activity and toured the town’s charity shops. If Marianna’s bank card was stolen and the thief used it the bank would wonder why less money was coming out of the account. Having said that I was the only one who bought anything. In the evening we went to The Saxon Mill for a very lovely meal and afterwards took a brief walk towards the ruins of a stately home. Marianna accosted a man carrying a guide book who clearly hadn’t spoken to another human being for many years and looked quite terrified. He informed us that we were looking at Guys Cliffe House. It’s the first house I’ve seen for some time that’s in a worst state than ours.

On the Sunday we went to Kenilworth Castle which was very impressively organised with lots of accessible information and interactive activities to keep a 39 year old occupied. The grounds were very beautiful and the staff extremely helpful in a particularly unEnglish way. Mum and Dad weren’t too interested to read about the history of the buildings and artifacts, claiming they were too old to take on new information and so just larked about but they did listen to the audioguide which we all wore. It's the first time i've visited somewhere like that with my parents when i wasn't wearing my school uniform. We went on from there to the Fleur De Lys at Lowsonford for more lovely food. Satiated, we returned home to provide them with more super strong tea. "Will you be providing any Grandchildren any time soon?" my mother asked, being uncharacterstically forward. I hurried them towards their car and we waved them goodbye as they headed back to the Fens.