Billy Young's Blog - Posts Tagged "council"

Got a phone call at half eight on Wednesday morning asking me in I could start back at work that morning. Two weeks this time is the promise. It has been an easy few days working on the turntable. It seems there’s a few small orders but nothing like I would have expected this time of year. I suppose that’s due to the downturn in the world economy. A couple of months worth of work to get Xmas paid for would have been good but you take what you get and make the most of it.
My wife and my friend Mickey finished off the lining paper leaving me to paint the walls this weekend. I have the fire surround to paint as well. I can move it away from the wall so no worries there. The inset will be black whilst the rest is getting painted white. The fire wall is going to be chocolate brown and the other walls shall be cream. It should be nice when it’s finished. It’s amazing how long it takes when you’re trying to get it right. There was more filling to be done at the start of the week, which I got done before getting the call to work. The council never do everything; in fact you usually find that when you call them they try to get out of their obligation to do the work. Miss a weeks rent and they’ll be at your door to see why. Local authorities, what can you do with them?

I’m on holiday over the next week from work as I mentioned last week. Magz has already given her orders. She wants me to strip the wallpaper and tiles from the bathroom. It isn’t a big job as the room is on the small side so it shouldn’t take too long to do. I’ll start that tomorrow then it will be out of the way leaving me plenty of time to see to my garden. Once the bathroom is stripped we’ll need to wait on the council to get it replastered as I know that much of it will be lost. This is mainly down to the age of the house and the fact much of it is already blown. Only the paper is holding it up. Where the paper has started to come away so has the plaster beneath, which is a sign of how badly it has deteriorated over its life. We are also supposed to be getting a new bathroom suite this year at some point though with our council that could stretch to sometime in the next decade. Well maybe not quite that long but you get the idea. I think most local authorities are the same when it comes down to that sort of thing. They’re good at making promises but when it comes to the work it seems to take for ever for them to get round to doing it as is the case with all the jobs they have been promising us for the past few years. I must admit though they have been round to redo the cavity wall insulation in the past couple of weeks. They drilled the holes, sucked out all the old stuff and then left. That was two weeks ago and they said they’d be back the following week. We are still waiting. If that were a private firm working under contract I don’t think they would be in business for long. Complaining to the council only seems to make them take even longer getting the work done. It is almost like they have a list of moaners that are made to wait which I must be at the top of, hehehe.

The garden is slowly coming to life again after what seems like a long winter. My seedlings are germinating nicely and the plants I bought this week are doing well. I got some tomatoes as well as bell peppers, both of which are showing buds already. I also got some thyme today. Yes I tried growing it last year but it came to nought so I’m attempting to grow it again. While for the first time I am growing some pumpkins plus runner beans. Magz still wants me to get the cauliflower going again though I’m delaying planting that till later in the month to see if I have enough tubs left for it. She suggested that I get some more grow bags for it. The thing being is space though in the garden. As you know I don’t have a large back garden so I have to plan things carefully so I don’t end up taking over part of the drying green. Magz wouldn’t be too pleased to lose any of her grass, mind I don’t think it would look to good either.
As I said last week I stripped the bathroom. As expected much of the plaster from the walls came away with the paper meaning we will need the council to give it a fresh skim. The great thing was the inspector came out mid week which was a surprise it being so quick. I had expected to wait at least a few weeks for him to visit to assess what needed done. I was glad to be wrong on that front. Let us hope the work is done as fast. Magz has already started looking at new tiles for it and I am already wondering where I’ll get the funds from for it. The ones she likes aren’t cheap costing in the twenty pound a pack. I haven’t even worked out how many packs might we’ll need. I’m sure it’s more than my slender budget will feel comfortable with. Mind there is no rush as we are supposed to be getting a new bathroom suite this year though I don’t know when that will be, just that it will be this year until it is put of by the council till next year. Well it will give me time to get the finances to give Magz the tiles she wants.

Well the workmen came and now we have no heating or hot water. We have no idea when we might get things fixed as the problem is with our boiler which needs a special part ordered. This all leaves us in limbo as they council have no clue how long this part might take to arrive. Yes we got nice new units but our kitchen has also be none existent plus we still have to wait till Monday before we can start getting things to normal. Why? I hear you ask. Well the plasterer and tiler are still to do their thing to finish everything off.
As you can imagine this has been a pretty stressful week. Coming home to workmen stomping through your house after a long day at work, well I don’t have to tell you. Next week doesn’t look any better even though it is the week before the holidays from work. I’m only glad all this work is being done in the summer as if it had been the winter it would be a mighty cold time we would be having.
All the stress of the last week has meant that I have been losing myself in gaming. I’ve been playing Oblivion part the The Elder Scrolls series rather than coming home to write a poem. That has been my usual routine over the past few months. Not that many of them have been that good but it does keep me writing. I have liked some of them though they need editing. Finding the extra time to do that seems beyond my reach as work takes up so much of the day. Of course without work there isn’t the money to survive is there or to get the luxuries that we save for. Like the new computer that I have been saving for which I have finally reach my target. That will mean that I can have some retail therapy tonight. Calum is looking forward to getting my old one.

The leak under the sink in the kitchen has been but we still don’t have hot water or heating. Yes we had a leak in the new kitchen which we discovered on Sunday. Luckily it had been caught by a plastic box we use for keeping cleaning stuff in such as brillo pads, new dish clothes, etc, etc. It did mean much of that had to be replaced but we weren’t faced with water everywhere. The leak was from the pipes going to our washing machine. The washers were faulty that had been fitted or were wrongly installed. Either way it meant calling the council out to fix the problem which was sorted by Monday evening. My hat is off to the councils swift response to the problem.
Well I am now waiting the delivery of my parts to build my new computer. I have gone for the I7 3770 processor from Intel. I could have went for the K series for overclocking but thought that I wasn’t likely to do that so the extra money would be a waste. That will fit in nicely in the Asus P8ZZ77 V LX. With the SSD (solid state drive), 8GB memory, HD7850 graphics card all going into a Zalman Z11 mid case running Windows 7. It should be a great system with loads of power to drive any games I want to run.
Yeah that could distract me from writing as has been the case over the past couple of weeks. I won’t make excuses as I would only be lying to myself if I did. Oblivion is proving to be a rather addictive gaming experience. Even wile at work I have found that I have been thinking about what I have to do in the game. Saying that may sound weird but I find the same when reading a good book. Rather with a book I find myself thinking over what the main character might do next. I suppose we all do that though, right.
Before I go though a word on a book sale over at Smashwords.com for the month of July. From the 1st – 31st if you use the code SSW50 you can gat any of my four horror tales at half price of $1. There will be loads of other books on sale as well so why not check it out. Remember though these are ebooks we are talking about not hard copies.

My son Calum found that his bed was soaked last Saturday when he came home from work. Our roof has developed a leak and the water had found its way in over Calum's bed. He wasn't best pleased as you can guess. It only got worse as the landlord, the local council, took most of this week to getting around to fixing it. When I say fixing it though that has yet to be seen as they have said they will need to come back and check it on Monday. They think it was the flashing around the chimney. It is to be wet tomorrow so I'll go up into the loft to have a look myself. Magz said she though she heard water dripping into the bucket that the second council worker put up there to catch the water. When we first discovered the leak I tried to place a container under it up there but it wouldn't sit up or even catch it all. In the end we had to catch the water by leaving a bucket on Calum's bed. That left the sofa for my son to sleep on for a couple of nights to his added annoyance. With the leak has come a nasty smell of damp. It hangs in the air plus I'm sure I came still smell on my clothes at work. It makes you feel a bit like your unwashed. Not a nice feeling. Hopefully I find that it has been fixed tomorrow. If it isn't I think it will be me that gets upset about it this time. Not to say I wasn't unhappy with the council when it took them so long to do something in the first place. Mind it is always the same when it comes to landlords isn't it.