Dog Timekeeping
Posted: Sun 28 January, 2007 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Weirdness 1 Comment »I’ve written before about how Hound is very time-driven, which is always a bizarre experience. While I know she’s actually fairly autistic, and has her patterns that she gets twitchy if they’re not fulfilled.
But at the same time, she’s still time-driven. Last night, she was wanting to go out for a walk at 8:15. For a variety of reasons, it wasn’t oing to happen ’til half eight. So I told her to wait 15 mnutes, and then we’d go out. (Yes, I know the insanity of talking to one’s Hound like this but he, there we go) She went off to lie down. The next time she got up to nag for her walk was…. 8:30.
However, I do wish that she understood about weekends. Weekdays, we leave the house at about 7.30, and Hound goes for a walk once Herself has dropped me off at the station. Weekends, well, it’d be nice to have a lie-in, but Hound usually thinks that it’s still time for her walk at 7.30, and bounces on the bed.
I have to say, getting dog-breath in the face as a wake-up call is so not a good first experience of the day.
Racism?
Posted: Fri 19 January, 2007 Filed under: News, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Before I start, I just want to say that actually, I’ve no idea what was said on Big Brother that’s caused the racism hysteria , and to be honest I don’t really care. From what I’ve heard, neither Jade nor t’other one who’ve been accused are exactly laden with brains, and thus it’s more (as Gordon says) an indictment of ignorance and stupidity. But all the same.
What really pisses me off about the entire thing is that somehow it’s enabled bigoted hate-rags like the Daily Mail and the Daily Express to get all snotty and holier-than-thou about racism.
These are the media Andrex that are forever harping on about asylum seekers (Mail example, Express example), immigrants (Mail example) and a general ‘send them back where they came from’ attitude to life. Oh, not forgetting the odd dollop of sneery ‘told you so’ smut and gossip, just for ‘balance’.
So how do hate-mongering pieces of shit like that end up being “OK” , while Celebrity Big Brother is castigated by those self-same racist, arrogant bunches of media-whoring tossers?
Solicitation
Posted: Wed 17 January, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, House Purchase, Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »Maybe it’s just because I’m new to this property-purchasing lark, but I find myself utterly gobsmacked by the charges from solicitors.
OK, the majority of the bill cost is actually the stamp duty for the property purchase, which amounts to £2,400 , but still, the quotes we’ve had so far have all added another £1,100 or so to that price.
Mind you, it does make me glad we didn’t go for Property One (as discussed here) where the stamp duty would’ve been £7,800 or so because of going over to the 3% band – so all told, including solicitors fees it would’ve added about another £10,000 to the price.
Oh, and then let’s not forget the estate agent’s fees too. No idea what they’ll come to yet…
All the same, it just seems like more fuckin’ expense. We can handle it, but jesus, this process gets damn expensive damn quick.
Oops
Posted: Tue 16 January, 2007 Filed under: Charm School, Domestic, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »Whoops. I think that we’ve unintentionally dropped some people right in the shit. I hope we haven’t, but well, if we have, that’s life.
Basically, one of the houses we viewed a couple of weeks ago now was fantastic. We both fell in love with it, but had some questions that needed to be asked. Questions about things like planning permission – which we’d been told had been granted to the previous owners, but had lapsed as the current owners hadn’t done anything. There was also a small matter of a shared wall that needed repairing.
So I contacted the local council, and asked them what the deal was. Oops.
Turns out the property has never had a planning application made against it – since at least the 70s. And that shared wall is – um – part of a Grade 1 listed building. In short, “Oh, bollocks”. They also dropped in the little fact – which the current owners hadn’t divulged – that there were a number of trees on the property that were covered by a Tree Protection Order (TPO)
And I’ve just had another email from the council, saying that they’re going to be sending out an inspector today, to check those trees, and the property in general. OK, that’s all well and good.
Except, um, I think that the current owners have cut down two of those trees that’re covered by the TPO. And that could drop them right in the shit, with fines of up to £40,000 if I’m right.
So we didn’t intend to drop anyone in it, but in fact we may have done so. Oops.
Getting Involved
Posted: Tue 16 January, 2007 Filed under: Getting Organised, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »Now here’s something to scare the pants off most people : I’ve often thought about whether I should get more involved in political stuff. After all, I’m forever griping about stuff, and then don’t do much else about it except rant on, so maybe I should do more than that.
Anyway, that made this piece by Greg Hartnett about ’12 ways to get involved’ quite interesting to me. Who knows, maybe I’ll start angling to do more once we’ve moved, and are slightly more settled into the village…
Warning Signs 2
Posted: Thu 11 January, 2007 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Weirdness Leave a comment »On the way in to work this morning, I noticed another great sign at Ely station…
Warning : This heater gets hot.
Definitely one to file under “No Shit, Sherlock”