27 Jul 10 The bullying behavour of our neighbours, Mr and Mrs Twattock*
Following on from my previous post about the nasty neighbours this entry examines the use of tactics and demeanour to assert unreasonable control over a neighbour – in this instance, us
…all the unwritten sentiment amply stuffed between the lines
So at about 11.30 on Thursday night I do the rounds of the house where I make sure all the doors that are permanently locked are in fact locked. And on the doorstep below the letter-box is a neatly folded piece of lined exercise book paper.
It said, in precis and including all the unwritten sentiment amply stuffed between the lines, that:
How dare you do some garden landscaping without asking us?
We have just got back from our holiday and we felt compelled to stroll into your garden uninvited to make sure you have been behaving yourselves while we have been away. And we are shocked and angered to the core. How dare you do some garden landscaping without asking us if we minded first? I am really pissed off with you because some of the stuff you have dug up is near the fence, between our properties – you know the one we have been pushing back into your property, with a big lump of concrete for the last year, thus extending our border.
We knew you were going to do this you bastards because you had the audacity to talk to another neighbour about it and you didn’t ask our permission.
You are in contravention of the Party Wall Act even though I have no idea what I am talking about
You are in contravention of the Party Wall Act even though I have no idea what I am talking about it just sounds officious and I want to make you think I am going to sue you. And even though your landscaping is nowhere near the party wall I will persist with this hollow bullying, in fact I am going to give you so much shit about this because I am angry.
You must learn that it is not permitted for you to do what you want within the bounds of your own property
I am choosing in this letter to ignore the continual abuse we afford you, namely that:
- we we go out of our way to blank you completely;
- park our collection of over-sized 4×4 vehicles to make it as dangerous and difficult as possible for you to get out of your narrow drive;
- act surly and superior and as antisocial as we can possibly be towards you;
- complain non-stop and blame you for building work that was beyond your control and happened over a year ago;
- act like sorry victims with no regard for others misfortunes
- bad mouth you to any neighbour we come across.
I am, however, choosing in this letter to accuse you of a lack of courtesy towards us because you did not ask our permission to do some work within your own property. I am also ignoring the fact that the work will have no impact on us and we will not be able to see it, other than on our uninvited visits into your garden to have a snoop around.
You will present yourself to me at the earliest opportunity where I shall bollock you to make you stop your outrageous gardening practice. You must learn that it is not permitted for you to do what you want within the bounds of your own property.
Yours etc.
The Twattocks*
More later…
(*Real names changed)
25 Jul 10 Nasty neighbours
Don’t you just hate it when someone thinks that whatever you do is subject to their approval simply because they live next door.
“Errr , did you know your house just got flooded?”
As a family we have had our share of bad luck, not least getting flooded out of our house in 2007 and being unable to return until 2009. During that time, the place was initially derelict and then a massive building site for about a year. From time to time we did spare a thought for our semi detached neighbours. They had exchanged contracts to buy their house an hour or two before it actually flooded. The previous owners laid a cheap carpet over the mess and did a runner, not informing the new owners of the flood. In fact our first words to them was something like: “Errr , did you know your house just got flooded?”. They didn’t.
And sure enough, they sold up and fucked off – the best day of our entire experience of living next door to them
The previous family had moved in a couple of years before the flood. They extended their boundaries to maximise its value. In the process they made our drive an almost impossibly narrow channel. They shoved a conservatory near the boundary of the two properties with the windows looking straight onto our garden. They were generally fairly abrupt and not at all concerned about our inconvenience; why should they be? They were just looking to maximise value, sell and leave the pissed off neighbours behind them. And sure enough, they sold up and fucked off – the best day of our entire experience of living next door to them.
The new couple seemed nice enough. But our experience of living next to them started out with us moving out of our flooded and wrecked house. I think I first met them as I was waiting for a lorry to come and take our belongings to a landfill site. Concurrently they were getting out of a removal van to find out that they were moving into a flooded property.
When we did see them, the strain showed.
So we moved out – our place being uninhabitable and they stayed put. As the next two years progressed, we were conscious of their situation. We told the builders not to upset them while they were at work on our house. And sure enough, day after day they became massively upset at the noise, holes coming through the party wall, their wooden floor was wrecked, cracks in the walls and more. The skips outside the property inconvenienced them and tore the tarmac up, noise, noise and more noise. And during this time they even had a baby. When we did see them, the strain showed.
Cheek-by-jowl living was never going to become cheek-to-cheek
And in the year since we moved back into the house, we have found that it clearly has left an indelible mark on their attitude towards us. I get the feeling that they hold us personably responsible. From a rational perspective, this is completely unreasonable, but it has clearly gone beyond that and they are now emotively extracting their revenge for their two years of hell – our hell not really being anything that concerns them. Clearly, from the moment we moved back in, cheek-by-jowl living was never going to become cheek-to-cheek.
Either grow up and act like adults or move out
But it’s all very petty. He wears a permanent scowl and she goes from greeting to whinging within two sentences. They have two (sometimes three) huge 4×4 vehicles plus their parent’s people carrier. As a matter of course they park these so close to our narrow driveway that it takes a three-point-turn to get out. It makes us invisible to passing vehicles. On three occasions passing traffic has screached to a halt as we pull out of our drive and narrowly missed our vehicles slowly emerging from behind a huge block of Mitsubishi military metal 4×4. I think the speeding bus was perhaps the scariest incident – it certainly made the kids scream. We have tried the concilliatory approach, the ‘please could you…’ approach and the ‘okay lets just not let it get to us’ approach. But it is not a friendly relationship, which is a shame really.
I think we could have ignored this pettiness in the hope that eventually they would either grow up and act like adults or move out. That was until Thursday.
14 Jul 10 When it all goes wrong
I have been listening - to an album called The Defamation of Strickland Banks by Plan B lately. It is the sad tale across thirteen songs of a man whose life goes from bad to worse all because he stayed somewhere too long and didn’t know when to just let go and leave it all behind.
It makes you think when your own life goes wrong how much of a spiral you can get into. Since the floods of 2007 which took the house apart, and ultimately led to the business faltering. The level of personal stress and strain has taken its toll on my health and the amount of money I ended up owing was so frightening that I could not bear to answer my phone or open letters.
Weirdly, all this time later, I have started answering my phone and all the people I thought would be threatening and demanding and frightening, like banks and credit card companies and solicitors and so on have all been really understanding. They have been really helpful and not scary at all. I still have to sort out the problems, but I want to do that and draw a line under it and they are actually very understanding and seem quite good about it.
If you’re in the same boat, just talk to them.
27 Jun 10 The bond of trust between Football team and football fan
England’s team traipsed out of the world cup having offered up a series woeful performances throughout the competition. They were made to look ordinary, if not outclassed, by minnows of world football from Algeria, USA and Slovenia. Then, as soon as they came up against a real team in Germany, they were dispatched, with the ease of a sledgehammer on jelly.
The national sense of shock has been amplified because we have had months of speculation about this being the golden generation. And the golden generation’s golden boy was Wayne Rooney. 2010 was pencilled in as the year the world would see his magnificence. For all the talk of Messi and Ronaldo and other ‘world class’ players, England had Rooney. The Henry V of our times going forth to to the breach with the blast of war blowing in our ears, to imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood and so on.
But instead of Henry V, closing the wall up with our English dead, we got Horrid Henry going missing when he should have been doing football with the rest of the world. In fact the whole sorry bunch of individuals shuffled together into matching shirts and pushed out of the tunnel, conspired to insult the memories of men like Bobby Moore and Stanley Matthews. Men who were knighted for services – outstanding services – to football. The entire team looked like overpaid show ponies who probably thought other teams would wither and fade in front of the power of their celebrity. Instead they came up against teams ready to play football in the spirit of like Moore and Matthews while Rooney and co thought they were in a TV episode of ‘Celebrity Posing on Grass’.
And what of the saviour of English football? No one could really answer that. The most remarkable contribution Rooney made to the competition was his impetuous complaint that the crowd were booing him. Perhaps he expected the producers to have briefed the crowd to clap wildly – just like in the script. But a fan earns less in a two years than Rooney earns in a week. The crowd have given up their holidays to come to South Africa and watch. The crowd, spent money on their credit cards that they will still be paying off when the next world cup starts in four years time. The crowd did it because they were doing their bit. They were there to add decibels to their debt and would have come away accepting a quarter final place, happy with a semi-final place and believing that we could, given a bit of luck, made the final and even won it.
There is a bond of trust between players and fans. We send them out in our name. The best of the best of what our nation can offer. We see our own identity and character in their performances. Because in our name they give of their all, fight, bleed, suffer injury and pain. These are our hailed heroes and representatives on the pitch. We give them celebrity status, they are gods of sorts. They are rewarded with riches beyond our wildest dreams and that is acceptable because they carry the dreams of a nation.
We do our bit as well. We kick every ball, feel every injustice celebrate every goal for and feel pain at every goal conceded. We know the misery of defeat. And deep down we know we can win the world cup. We bitch, debate, complain, argue and passionately display out support in every manifestation.
What happened to the England supporters in South Africa and at home was disgusting. The most expensive collection of footballers in history, with the best manager, the best preparation the best of everything contrived to fail. It was meticulously bungled through a mix of arrogance and inertia. The crowd will turn on these players. They will hound them out of South Africa, boo them back into Heathrow and boo them at every game they show up at next season. They will do this, not because the team lost, but because they did not try, they were inept, woeful, pathetic and in doing and being so, they have abused our trust.
Rooney World Class? Don’t make me laugh.
06 Jun 10 Jockey Inn, Baughton, Worcestershire – very disappointing
Yesterday Carolyn and I palmed the kids off on a sleepover with friends and in celebration of Carolyn’s birthday booked a table at The Jockey Inn at Baughton, near Earls Croombe In Worcestershire.
We last went there about eight years ago when our eldest son was about a month old in a carry-cot. While we ate, he spent the evening asleep on a spare table. I remember, it was very good. Since then, the pressure of children, money, and time means that Carolyn and I have probably been out, by ourselves, less than once a year.
So with this in mind, we thought – ‘night off, lets have a good meal, don’t want to travel a long way – lets go three miles down the lanes to The Jockey at Baughton’. What a disappointment!
We had booked the table the day before. But we seemed to be met with a hint of surprise once we got there. Still, no problem, there was a table and in fairness, the place was pretty busy. We wanted to order drinks, but no one wanted to take our order. Again, one of The Jockey’s virtues is its bijou cosiness and with a couple locals camped out at the small bar, it is difficult to get your message through.
So we took our seats and studied the blackboards and ordered food. In my case a mozzarella and tomato starter, followed by a rump steak and side salad. Carolyn went for the pork stoganoff; at least she did once we had explained to the waitress what stroganoff was.
And then it arrived. If you have ever wondered what it is like to have your taste buds removed, I suggest you go to the Jockey and order this selection. I genuinely mean it. There was not a hint of taste in the entire meal. The mozzarella and tomatoes formed perhaps the worst of it. It was devoid of any taste at all – it was just stuff. If I had been blindfolded, from the texture, I would has guessed it was industrial residue and jelly. I know that mozzarella can be a bit like that, but you might normally expect a dressing of oil and balsamic vinegar with a few herbs to tease out the flavour. But not at the Jockey – just beef tomatoes and white lumps and no taste in any of it at all. There was some rather insipid oil on the table – not the rich golden / green colour of extra virgin olive oil, but the wee colour you get from catering packs of cheap olive oil of the non extra virgin variety. No black pepper, just the standard chip shop collection; salt and grey pepper, some acrid malt vinegar plus the cheap olive oil. I experimented with combinations of the available seasoning, but it was not possible to find any taste in the dish.
The Steak and Chips showed up. The chips were oven chips and devoid of taste again. I had really thought that a decent restaurant would either have made their own. You know – cut up potatoes and use one of those chip fryer gizmos. It’s easy. Or I would have been happy some really good ready made chips. But at the Jockey you get really cheap catering pack stuff that you might expect to get from burger vans.
The steak was cooked properly for Medium Rare. The texture was okay, the cut had a bit of stringy fat running through it, but within the bounds of acceptable. It was tender and cooked properly. But there was again barely a hint of taste. I asked for some mustard and pepped it up that way, but it was a very poor meal. The side salad turned up a little late and was more kitchen temperature than fridge temperature. It had all the right stuff in it. it looked quite nice, but warm salad tends to droop when you pick it up and is not something you want to put in your mouth.
I kept waiting for someone to ask “Is everything alright?” or “Are you enjoying it?”. I had mentally prepared the words – roughly to say “I have a little feedback, please take it the right way. We found the food a little lacking in flavour. I think some of the ingredients are not as good as other restaurants in the area and the food preparation feels a little slap-dash.” I wouldn’t have had a rant – I am typically English and I get embarrassed when I want to complain.
In addition, no one offered us a wine list. No one thought to ask us if we would like water, no one really seemed to care very much at all.
By the time we had asked for a wine list, we had decided to skip a desert, finish and go home as quickly as possible. So the entire evening was over before 9.00pm. We had envisaged it might have extended from 8.00pm until about 10.00pm with maybe a twenty minute expedition to the bar for a brandy at the bar .
The two starters and two main courses cost under £50 (obviously with wine it would have been more). On the face of it, that seems cheap. The trouble is, it tasted cheap, the service felt cheap and it was, as I said, a disappointment.
21 Mar 10 Learn something new no.7 – Last military action involving the longbow | #LearnSomethingNew
Courtesy of http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/
I strongly advise everyone to read this true story of Lieutenant Colonel (Mad) Jack Churchill – it is quite remarkable.
The last person to kill an enemy with a longbow in action against the enemy
It may be tempting to think of the Longbow as something used at Agincourt in the reign of Henry V, but the longb0w was used at least once in World War II By a British Officer, successfully killing a German soldier with it. The bowman, one Lieutenant Colonel Jack Churchill, known as ’Mad Jack’ Churchill was the sort of eccentric Englishman we like to think of as typical, but clearly they are atypical. Nevertheless, they are so remarkable that they imprint themselves upon our vision of own national character. Mad Jack went into battle with all the weaponry of 1940′w warfare, as well as a Claymore sword, a longbow and arrows and often bagpipes. His assertion that any officer who went into battle without a sword was ‘improperly dressed’. In later life he learnt to surf and was the first person to surf the River Severn’s tidal bore.
14 Mar 10 Learn something new no.6 – Sleep | #LearnSomethingNew
Learn Something New
Humans spend one-third of their lives asleep. A newborn child in a family will provide its parents with 400-750 hours lost sleep by it’s first birthday. The current world record for tsleeplessness is 11 days. This was set by an American, seventeen year old student in 1965 called Randy Gardner.
On some associated research:
- Heavy snorers get less sex.
- Rats deprived of sleep will die before those starved of food.
- Humans start yawning as foetuses 11 weeks after conception.
- Pythons require about 18 hours of sleep per day.
09 Mar 10 Learn something new no.5 – Water (and a bit about me and David Bellamy) | #LearnSomethingNew
David Bellamy (wearing some of the Rohan gear that I probably sent to him)
A long time ago, David Bellamy and I knew each other vaguely. He was a big fan of Rohan (clothing) and given that he was a regular on TV back then (late 80s), we were happy to clothe him and even took some inverted pride in his ‘Worst Dressed Man’ award. As Rohan’s Marketing Manager, it was part of my job to send all the gear to him. I later wrote articles in magazines, including one entitled ‘How Green Is Your Clothing’ for Outdoors Illustrated. I rang David to get his view on the subject and he kindly gave me an hour on the phone tutoring me in why cotton, natural as the plant is, can actually be an environmentally disastrous crop. The reason? It take 17 tons of water to produce 1 ton of cotton – cotton production is the reason that the Aral Sea in Russia effectively dried up.
Remembering this, I thought few other facts about the planet’s life giving fluid might be worth learning:
- It takes 120 gallons of water to produce one egg.
- A person can survive without food for more than 30 days, but less than a week without water.
- A gallon of water weighs 8.34 pounds.
- For every 2.31 feet that water is raised above the earth’s surface it can create one pound per square inch of pressure.
- The average household uses 107,000 gallons of water per year.
- It takes 1,851 gallons of water to refine one barrel of crude oil.
- It takes 1,500 gallons of water to process one barrel of beer.
- 95 percent of the world’s cities still dump raw sewage into their water supplies. Thus it should come as no surprise to know that 80 percent of all the health maladies in developing countries can be traced back to unsanitary water.
07 Mar 10 Learn something new no.4 – What is the current historical era? | #LearnSomethingNew
Learn Something New
We’ve all heard of the Stone Age, The Bronze Age and The Iron Age, but what Age are we now living in?
These titles refer to social and technical advances in the human race and lasted for thusands of years, so to call the current era e.g. ‘The Technical Age’ is a little premature. Although steam power (technology in an early frm) has been around for some 2000 years it has only impacted on society and environment for some 300 years, when it heralded the start of the industrial revolution. So in millennia to come, others will decide in what era we currently reside.
However from a geological perspective, Earth is currently in the Cenozoic Era of the Phanerozoic Eon.
04 Mar 10 Learn something new no.3 – The effects of global warming and rising sea levels | #LearnSomethingNew
Things that get wet tend to shrink - like Holland
Today I have learnt that sea levels are rising and I will not be moving to Peterborough or New York.
With a rise in sea levels of 1 meter, the UK could see coastal towns like Hull, Portsmouth and Bognor Regis swallowed by the sea. Inland, it could also be bad news for Peterborough.
At the other extreme, with a 14m rise, large chunks of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Somerset will succumb to the waves, changing the distinctive outline of the UK dramatically.
In such extreme circumstances, Holland would almost completely disappear, leaving two islands, each little bigger than the Isle of Wight. Most coastal towns on the East coast of America would be overwhelmed, and an area of China about the size of England would disappear, As would many Pacific and Indonesian islands.
Current predictions have sea level rising by about 0.8m by the year 2100, which still makes the coast a dodgy place to live. The rest of us may have dry feet, but the further effect on tides and the meteorological impact on the gulf stream and air currents etc. means it will become a very different world.
Courtesy of http://flood.firetree.net/
