50+ and proud of it.

The men have gone and left a nice wall with a concrete (oh, and jabalite) floor. In England, as you know, it rains a lot. Therefore the answer to the question "What's the difference between a swimming pool and a walled conservatory base?" is of course "None". The first member of our family to discover this was Leo, our ginger tom cat. He still hasn't recovered.

It was daughter's 17th birthday yesterday and we ventured out onto the road for the first time. Getting out of the village is interesting to say the least as the roads are very narrow and generally not suitable for novice drivers, particularly at nightfall. With a suitable amount of encouragement along the lines of "err, my side of the road please" and "ok, I'll get the branches from under the wipers" we reached a heady 35 miles an hour as we neared the next village. A country road isn't a real country road without a 90 degree bend in it, is it? So we duly hit said bend at the aforementioned speed. "Eeek, brake, brake, BRAKE!" - fair play we reached the bend at a leisurely pace - and then we hit the floodwater at the apex. I have my arm out of the window and most of the rainwater is now forced up my sleeve and down the inside of my jacket. Then "something happened" and a noticed a weird thumping noise from the nearside. "Pull ov...

The men finished the dwarf wall and got on with the floor. These guys have to "raise the floor" to get it onto the same level as the rest of the house. I spoke to the Floor Man - "You've got to raise this up a bit, how much concrete and ballast are you going to use?" "Err, based on the dimensions and knowing the density of concrete, I'd say about 8 tonnes" The Deputy Floor Man raised a surprised eyebrow - "Wot?, sod off Jim, I ain't mixin', humpin' an' layin' 8 tonne o' muck, you can soddin' well do it" I sloped off sideways muttering something about 'how many teas were required' and returned some 5 minutes later. "Err, me and Eric have had a word and we're going to put in a jabalite 1 floor which is much better and has greater thermal properties, and, err, more expensive" "I'm not paying anymore, it's not in the contract, stick with the plan" "Ok, we're going t...

I often have conference calls between the USA, England and Europe. These are notoriously long-winded and can go on for an hour or more. So it's not unusual for people to be late in "dialing in". Today was no exception, the Chairman of the call (i.e. the chap with the meeting password) had sent an email to all participants saying that even he was going to be late. However, I dialed in smack on time (at 14:00 BST) to hear the meeting start - the Chair having resolved his earlier problem. The following amazing 1 conversation took place:- 14:00 "Hi all, how are we going to proceed?" 14:01 "On Tuesday we'll turn everything off and restart with new parameters" 14:02 "Everyone alright with that?" 14:03 "Yup" 14:04 "Bye" (click, click, click). I then immediately receive another call from a customer which goes on for approximately 30 minutes. During which time I see an email pop into my inbox at 14:25 with the message "Yo...

I went home last night to find a large trench where the decking used to be. At the bottom was the foul drain (as expected) plus another (unexpected) 4" pipe running at 45 degrees across the corner of the trench. "That's a problem" I thought. It turns out to be the rainwater pipe running into the soakaway which is found to be approximately 300mm from the foundations. Graham, the builder, is smart enough not to carry on with the surveyor's say-so. So the surveyor rings me up this morning to tell me that there's absolutely no problem at all. "So what's the problem then?" "There isn't one. Shall we carry on, or shall we dig up your entire garden and reposition the soakaway at 5m from the house?" "Eh? There is a problem isn't there, or you wouldn't be on-site and ringing me up would you?" "No, no, the rainwater isn't going to eat into the foundations and make the whole thing collapse!" "So you'r...

SKI - spending the kids inheritance . Well, why not? Of all the things my Aunt would have approved of is a conservatory and a new kitchen. The last time we looked at this was about 3 years ago and found that B&Q do the exact conservatory that we wanted - so we toddle off to B&Q and get another quote. "It's £6,500 supply, customer fit" he beamed at us. "Ok, what's that with you fitting and doing the dwarf wall? "That's £19,400, sir." (Not a blog typo, he really did come up with that) "Eh?" "Oh err, um, I made a mistake, I've added the base work twice! Gosh that's only £13,400 now!" "Bye." I toddle off to the local independent conservatory chap who builds to your exact measurement. "There you go, here are some plans from B&Q. How much to supply and fit?" "About half and that's with a free fan or free cane furniture" "You've got the job. Hang on, it's says here in yo...

Can anyone explain to me why Ezeedsl keep changing the web address of my personal site from "www.ptv.e7even.com/ htdocs/ index.htm" to "www.ptv.e7even.com/index.htm" - i.e. without the /htdocs? This seems to happen randomly and without warning. It's damn annoying. Also, "Blogger's" spell checker suggests "Cling Film" for "Gillingham" - which amused me...

We spent 10 (count them) hours in total trying to buy a new kitchen over the weekend: 4 * 2.5 hour "consultations" with MFI, B&Q and Homebase. The latter being most fun. We turned up to an appointment with "Sara" who claimed no knowledge of us. "He wrote it in the book" I complained. "Oh yes, so he did". Anyway, "Sara" was "busy" and could Julie (or whatever her name was) do it instead? Now Julie has just spent the last two weeks on holiday and got back late the night before - so the poor love was shattered before we even started on her. "I've just come back off holiday and they've changed the software!" She hadn't a clue how to drive the new CAD package and spent most of the time moving the mouse over the icons hoping that the tooltips would give her an idea. She knew she had to click the little "disk thingy" to save the work - it kept popping up with a "Save As" dialogue whic...

For the first time in what seems like all of the Summer, I managed to be free for the "last Saturday of the month" last weekend and went to my American Car Club meeting at "the diner". After saying 'Hi' to everyone I was handed a free raffle ticket, and, I also bought some more to help the club funds. Later on in the evening I was most surprised to be handed a plaque that read Car Of The Month - Oct 2006 . This surprised me somewhat as I hadn't even had much chance to wash & polish it. I had however missed the vital point. "Who's got number 635?" "Oh, that's mine. What have I won?" "Here's your plaque". This is true.