Thursday, March 22, 2007
When you're a builder, you're a builder all the way!
Whose side are you on?

vs.

On my way home from work yesterday without anything to read, I resorted to having my intelligence insulted (then insulted some more, than spat and defecated upon) by picking up one of London's terrible free daily newspapers (see what I mean here). Turns out that it reported a news story directly relevant to my new neighborhood, where a large number of teenagers violently clashed in an after-school frenzy of fighting, stabbing and who knows what-all.1 There's coverage in our local newpaper here, but it fails to mention the most curious part of the story I read yesterday in the lighter-than-light free newspaper (which curiously seems to have only appeared in print, not in the online version available now [unless I hallucinated the whole thing. I know, I know, I should have kept a copy.]). According to my memory of this article, they reported that the conflict occurred between two main groups, one Turkish or Kurdish and the other Jamaican. Further, they reported that these groups were distinguished not only by their national origin, but by their choice of fashion accessories; one group favored Bob the Builder hats, and the other Thomas the Tank Engine.

Perhaps this detail is not factual, but I really like to think it is: thugs self-identifying with popular characters for the preschool set (for reasons completely unknown to me). And I'm very much looking forward to the extension of this trend to other groups and other characters. Care Bear Crips? Weeble Latin Kings? My Pretty Pony El Rukns?


1Readers of a nervous disposition may be relieved to know that this didn't actually happen on our doorstep, but instead near the movie theatres at the main shopping centre area some 15 minutes' walk away. Shopping malls are evil and dangerous; that's a take-home message we all can live with.

Thursday, March 22, 2007 5:45:32 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [3]  | 
 Monday, March 12, 2007
good neighbors!
This weekend saw really nice, springlike weather so we finally got around to cleaning up our shed and back garden a little bit. We also had big plans for the cat: after just over two weeks being cooped up inside, it was to be her first day allowed outside. So we opened the door and waited for her to follow us out. Instead, she just peeked out the back door, then immediately scrambled for safety under the recliner in the living room. Where she stayed for the next five hours or so. Poor kitty.

But that didn't stop us; we lounged around the back garden reading the paper, moving plant pots around, and planting some tomato & zucchini seeds (the previous owner left all sorts of gardening goodies including one of those little portable mini-greenhouses, so we figured we may as well put at least a few of them to good use). Also found a stack of 33rpm records in the shed, unfortunately suffering badly from the shed's missing window (now temporarily repaired). An assortment of classic works including some classical (Beethoven, Chopin), some musicals (Mikado, Oliver!), and quite a bit of folk and traditional songs. We arranged them to dry out; surely some of them can be salvaged.

While we were puttering about in the garden, we got chatting to a neighbor who lives a few doors down (but whose flat shares a wall with ours... explain that if you can!). He's a very nice guy, even invited us over to his place for a BBQ. Conversations with neighbors?! Quite different from our previous homes around London. Turns out he works in the building trades, and bought his flat three years ago for pennies (it was a derelict wreck). He's put thousands into it, and loads of work, and there's still plenty to be done (attic conversion, roof replacement, never mind front stairs and front rooms which are still totally unfinished). But the rooms he's completed (lounge, kitchen, bathroom) gave us all sorts of large-scale ideas we might be able to think about doing sometime in the future (way, way in the future, though). All in all, a very nice meeting-the-neighbors occasion.

And oh yeah, we did have a new hot-water heater installed on Saturday. They arrived bright and early to do the work, and blazed right through without taking a break or anything. Before noon they'd installed the new heater, carted the old one away, and cleaned up at least a little bit of their mess. Except, well, one of our towels was full of solder and filth, assorted icky bits of residue could be found various places, and worst of all they'd made a mess out of our bathroom wall. The old heater had a very large hole for the flue; the new one required only a small hole. So they had to patch the remaining gap, which they did very poorly. I think they just used a large chunk of something wider than the brick in the wall, because it protrudes into the bathroom (giving the wall a lovely bulge). And outside is equally foul; they just did an extremely slapdash job on the wall (quite consistent with the stereotype of the British builder, I'm sorry to say). I really started to regret going with a local company to do the work, but it appears we will get some satisfaction after all; they have pledged to make the job good at no further cost to us. I will, however, reserve judgement until this actually happens.

beasts | house
Monday, March 12, 2007 4:58:57 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [4]  | 
 Thursday, March 08, 2007
Caught holding the bag.
This afternoon I got to spent an hour or so idling about my department's common room, for entirely legitimate work-related purposes1 rather than simple laziness. A young gentleman of American extraction was also idling nearby, chatting to his girlfriend in a loud voice that practically demanded to be eavesdropped upon. Since my reading material was a complicated and dull paper I'm reviewing, I was quick to comply. Apparently some of his mates had recently seen him holding her purse, and quite clearly he was feeling hurt and defensive about their ridicule. "I was only being chivalrous, and you'd asked me to do it. I sure wouldn't have done it if you hadn't asked me to. And it's not like guys don't sometimes hold their girlfriend's purse for whatever reason, it's just something you've gotta do having a girlfriend." And so on and so on, listing other guys he knew who had, at one time or another, been seen holding their girlfriend's purse. He never actually came out admitted that the boys had seen him holding a purse and teaased him for being gay, but this was strongly implied throughout: "it would be different if I had a purse and was holding it, but it wasn't even mine!". He was getting so angry just discussing the topic I wished I had a purse, so I could bring it up to him and ask him if he'd dropped it by mistake. Unfortunately, eventually the girlfriend decided enough was enough and told him to shut up. Which meant I had to resume my reading.

1Helping to herd undergraduates between one of three testing locations, because today was our lab's annual oppportunity to test a large number of students at once without paying them. I was mainly responsible for the main waiting room, directing people to the right testing areas if they got lost, and making sure nobody wandered off in between sessions. Which meant occasionally standing up and telling one group to go down the hall, and otherwise sitting around reading (and eavesdropping).

Thursday, March 08, 2007 3:35:30 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [1]  | 
 Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Ah! the perils of the landed gentry
Since we moved into the Dunce Arms, posts here have been few and far between. Things have been really busy at work, and there's no shortage of things to do at home. As I mentioned in my last post, we started off with some bold plans, but reality quickly intervened. Instead we've been focusing on doing things gradually, focusing on those things most necessary to quality of life (facilities for eating, bathing, lounging, laundry and sleeping, perhaps not in that order). We've finally reached a point where most of the boxes are unpacked, though many things have not yet found their ideal locations yet. And a few windows are covered now (a couple of blinds, one set of curtains and another set hung temporarily in the living room so that "they" can't see in so well. And we've moved a bunch of luggage up to the attic, and moved items of furniture to their (mostly) permanent homes. And the cat seems to have (mostly) calmed down about all the new smells, noises and general strangeness.

There are still quite a few things still to come, such as a new bed (arriving next week, until which time we will get by with the sofa bed). And we still need to find more curtains, and down the line there's some really nasty wallpaper and carpets in certain places that will need to go really soon. And the back door frame is doing very poorly and needs to be replaced at some point. But then on Friday we had our first real fun excitement as homeowners... the lovely 30-year-old water heater decided to give up the ghost. Well, not exactly giving up the ghost, it just started spewing water (or at least a fast drip). Turns out an old repair on an old heater had finally given way. Fortunately this is an "instant" heater using only gas and not electricity, so it wasn't like a huge water tank suddenly gave way, but a continuous drip is a bad, bad thing. Plumbers jerked me around all day on Friday; eventually (at the end of the day) they claimed someone had left a message earlier in the day saying that no one would be able to come to my area that day (of course this happened at the end of Friday, when presumably they hoped to get me on a weekend call-out). The drip was slow enough we went through the weekend with the bucket system, and today a plumber (from a different company) finally came round to check it out. His opinion was that it must be replaced, and soon. To the tune of £1600, but fortunately for us they can do it in a day, given a day's notice. Can we say OUCH? The cat cowered under the chair at the sound of that, and I would have too if there was room for me. So it looks like we're going to be spending a hefty sum in the next few days. Looks like those jewel-encrusted bicycle tires will have to wait another week or two.

house
Tuesday, March 06, 2007 5:25:00 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [1]  |