Owning your own home

Stow Brothers eh...

Bought my place through them when it was the brothers doing the work. Very good.
For the sale though, ended up with Bairstard Thieves as SB seem a victim of their own success - lots of suggestions to keep lowering the price, "viewing days" and a succession of clueless agents a different point of contact each week. Gave up and went old school. B.E. had offers coming within a week.

Andy Carroll's house in Chigwell:

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/fullscreen/image-gallery.html?propertyId=77197013&photoIndex=6

Grim

If I had to guess I'd say scaffolding millionaire:

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-63963217.html

I made the mistake of joining the Facebook group for our block of flats (in Blackheath). I wish I hadn't.

Turns out that all of my neighbours are rich pricks who live in constant seething anger over each other's transgressions such as having the audacity to park their car outside their garage for five minutes while carrying some heavy furniture in or having a fox split open a rubbish bag and live in perpetual that the "povvos" down the hill in Lewisham will come and steal their beloved rich people stuff.

One of my neighbours recently called the police because she saw "a suspicious looking man in a tracksuit". It was my neighbour, a radiologist at a local hospital, having a fag.

Somebody had their house broken into in the next street this week and by the chat I am seeing in this group, people are barricading themselves in with furniture and choosing which weapons to keep handy.

For fucks sake, you utter bellends, cut it the fuck out.

Suggest a viewing party of high rise followed by dredd.

And then Trainspotting

On the plus note, it presents a unique trolling opportunity. I'm quite enjoying posting the monthly crime stats for the post code in the group while they're all hysterically calling the police on each other.

August: No crimes
September: No crimes
October: No crimes
...
...
...

It must suck to live in this much fear.

Edit: To be fair, I will have to post 1 crime for December by the sounds of it.

Need a new vacuum cleaner - is the Shark still the go to one?

We bought a Miele Blizzard CX1 Cat & Dog recently to end the tyranny of Dyson in our home and are delighted with it. Has made a big difference to my allergies actually.

I think so.

Another +1 for Miele.

We've got the repair man coming out today for the fourth attempt to fix our Miele fridge/freezer. This is the replacement one we bought, at a discount, after our previous one packed up.

So Miele can fuck off.

Sharks have the amazing modular system that makes it really easy to take apart to remove blockages. Should your child throw something on the floor in a shit mood, leaving you to hoover it up and then hoover something that blocks up your new hoover on the first day of use. For example.

In 1980 someone died.

shark all the way.

tho they do struggle a bit with leaves.

we have leaves by the front door. i should probably just pick them up.

Get a leaf blower. And blow them away.

^ doesn't andyp sell two stroke leaf blowers for a living?

He only works Tokyo hours, obvs, so you have to call between 2am and 6am

I have a Shark vacuum. It likes cables, if a headphone is laying about, it's gone. Chargers are another.

Accidentally sucked up a sock too the other day.
Easy to take apart to rescue the tangled bits. Quite pleased with it on the whole.

One of my neighbours recently called the police because she saw "a suspicious looking man in a tracksuit". It was my neighbour, a radiologist at a local hospital, having a fag.

Hah this is amazing

We've even got a residents campaign to build a wall around the block with digital entry systems and CCTV. For our mostly zero crime building overlooking a world heritage site in a conservation area. Despite the police advising that none of those measures tend to reduce crime.

I was recently asked to be a director of the rtm company. Jog on >>>>>>

Yes we did, well, we are in the process of doing so. Not tossers and they take lovely photos. Ours is an easy sell and went for way over so I can't vouch for selling something more troublesome/expensive.

The only thing that disappointed me was that our buyers survey showed up damp, which was expected. They wanted to investigate it, and were absolutely insistent on using someone from Rentokil to look into it. I said I know of a couple of reliable independents but they said they trust their guy, even though he's got something to sell. I said fine, but I would obviously question anything they find and have it checked by an indie.

Since they sell properties daily, a good amount of which must need damp investigated, I was amazed they didn't have a few trustworthy independent specialists on their books who they can recommend.

(PS in the end it was alright, the guy came over and straight away said it was a bit of condensation from where a sofa was pushed against a solid exterior wall. We must have got the 1 in 3 Rentokil surveyors who you can trust, according to Which?)

I was recently asked to be a director of the rtm company. Jog on >>>>>>

Sounds to me like you could do some good work as a director in terms of changing the culture for the better.

We've even got a residents campaign to build a wall around the block with digital entry systems and CCTV. For our mostly zero crime building overlooking a world heritage site in a conservation area. Despite the police advising that none of those measures tend to reduce crime.

But they have the advantage of costing shit loads of money in install and upkeep.

Wait

This reminds me of the story of Steve Bannon going to a hyper wealthy, super safe gated community in Arizona to raise funds for the border wall. The super wealthy residents suggested further funds would be available if the wall would also go up along the California/Arizona & Arizona/New Mexico state lines.

Its a noble cause. The chap who is leaving is a saint. Unfortunately I have way too many problems trying to function on a basic level to have any spare energy to take on that sort of responsibility.

We're very lucky here. Money is well spent. The adults are in charge. Its a peaceful and mostly problem free block. I'm lucky that a Facebook group is my only major concern.