Builders and developers seem to get away with murder and in practice it is best to stop any errors or oversights in their tracks. Certainly, relying on the council or the courts to reverse excesses once they have been 'set in stone' rarely works. Keeping an eye on the builders requires vigilance, and in the…
Public inconveniences
I work out at the gym about five times a week with cycling and some standard aerobics. Whatever the advantages, they are not preparation enough for two real life challenges. Both are ungainly and require contortions, call upon muscles normally untested and are proving increasingly difficult. The first involves getting to (and from) the driver’s…
Home sweet home
Not for the first time our house has been invaded. I am not talking about uninvited mice or ants but about invited builders. It started at the end of March and was to finish in 8 weeks. With all our careful planning this was going to be bearable but, in reality, it has been the…
Life’s little irritants
Phil Gould gets really rather ratty. Is it a sign of his rage? So what is it that really annoys you? What is it that sends you into a spasm of seethe or a descent into a slough of sulk – apart, that is, from reading a blog commencing with a raft of rhetoric or indeed…
Present imperfect
That's the last time I take a bottle of Grand Cru Chablis to a dinner party, I said grumpily as we threaded our way down the garden path. I realised that I had become a little unsteady on my feet - just as well that the taxi had arrived to pick us up at the appointed…
Questions that rock
Sometimes I get a question that rocks me back. I got one last week. On the bike that morning, I had been puzzling over Shakespeare’s seven ages of man. Mine came to four – ‘development’, ‘reproduction’, ‘consolidation’ and ‘decline’. I presented these over tea and reproduction-going-on-consolidation man asked declining-man (me) - ‘if you were offered…
Granny C and the mosquito
Granny C often came to stay. One evening she had been uncommonly touchy and in keeping, after an hour or so of silence, she suddenly announced that the house was far too dusty and that she intended to vacuum the whole place the next day. Then, she upped and went to bed. As usual she…
Lost for words
"There must be a German word for it," I said, as we breezed past the entrance gate. The magnificent sandstone facade of the house, basking in the evening sun, suddenly shot into in my rear view mirror. "German word for what?" asked my wife. "Realising that was your turning, just after you've gone past it."…