Badger Towers

Thursday 11th March

Another late start, this time because I have to show the man from the lettings agency around so he can measure up the current Badger Towers. His company supplied him with a chunky biro and some graph paper, but on closer inspection it turns out to be digi-paper, which works using a clever dot matrix background and a scanner on the end of the pen which works out where on the paper it’s been pushed and then records these pen movements (along with a usable paper original because it’s also literally a biro too).  At the end of his survey he presses the button marked “uplaod teh codez” and the CAD drawing men in his office get to work on their drawing of the house.  By the time he goes home to watch Eastenders the plans are already sitting in the letting agents’ inbox. Clever.

Eventually I make it to the house with my Building Control applications and various plans of the street, surrounding area, property boundaries, foul and surface sewers and nearby paedophile networks.  I use my brand spanking new parking permit which feels good. I can now park closer to Oxford city centre than almost anyone else in the world.  Three hours in an Oxford car park will set you back £9 you can see why nearby streets are attractive to commuters, shoppers and tourists.

Feeling super-smug I walk into the city and deliver the Building Control forms to the council and then walk back over the second footbridge which they’ve conveniently placed for us to cross the Thames, this one a former narrow-gauge railway bridge which used to serve the gasworks near Thames Street.  It’s now a nature reserve and dogging location.

Back to the house and I find the cistern has been … re-plumbed.  John has rigged up the tap from the small sink to fill the cistern from above.  Unfortunately it leaks and is making its way through the floor into the kitchen.   A quick phone call and a screwdriver later and it’s all stopped. What we in the IT business call a “workaround”.

I get the Gordon Freeman crowbar out and start smashing at the ugly arch over the hallway, now I know it’s made of plywood.  It comes off easily and I feel somehow more in charge of this house. Underneath are some yellowish panels. To make  the arch blend with this wood someone has attacked it with a chisel and made massive gouges, destroying the panels. The feeling of control passes when I realise we have to rip the panels out and re-plaster.

On the plus side, the new bargain window has arrived and the new drainage is in. Unfortunately the drainage can’t be covered up again until Mr Building Control officer comes to have a look sometime next week when he can be arsed.

But you don’t care about all this. All you’re waiting for is the “Found today” section.

Found today

Some of that groovy wallpaper

The Observer from August 1984. The Olympics were on in Los Angeles. I was just coming up to my 10th birthday. We lived temporarily at Norwich Avenue in Bournemouth with my aunt & uncle after returning from Los Angeles where we’d had our failed emigration experiment. This was used as wadding when they put a big sheet of metal over the fireplace.