February Phil

First of all, sorry for not quite making a post in February but we have been so busy there has been no time.

It was a long time coming but the moment finally arrived and my parents could move house right at the end of last month.  It was very stressful, especially as after the removals people had moved all our stuff out and we had had the go ahead to hand our keys over, we didn’t get the keys to our bungalow for another 4 hours.  Its so frustrating, and the bungalow hadn’t been lived in for over 6 months, it was all down to the solicitors.  If we had known we would have saved a couple of chairs back but mum and dad started out sitting on the stairs and ended up sitting in the cars outside their new bungalow.  Along with the BT engineer waiting to connect the phone and the removals wagon waiting to unload.

The oldies moved in and our work had only just begun.  I began by measuring everything up and drawing the property.  The area in the shot is where they intend to put their garden shed.  Claire arranged for a survey for cavity wall insulation for them and we were all pleased to hear that they will get the work done free because of their age.  Trouble is, it wont get done until the end of march so the shed has to wait so they can get at it.

I was looking through the photo’s that I had taken to do this months blog and found a strange alien looking character sitting in our room on our first night in Kuala Lumpur.  That was that compact room where the bed filled the room and the wardrobe hung on the wall and there was no windows.  It wasn’t very nice after a while; especially when you wernt the only ones there.

I thought that I had better take a picture of myself to cheer myself up.

My parents house move wasn’t the only thing on the agenda during February; we got one of our flats back at Oldbrook.  The Polish tenants were evicted for non payment of rent and had done a runner leaving the place in a right old state.  Both upstairs bedrooms had mould all over the ceilings.  Strangely it didn’t feel damp to the touch but dry.

Which wasn’t the case for the bathroom wall which was soaking wet.  They have used compacted straw for the internal walls I am at a loss to understand why.  You cant easily fit pipes or cables.  If it gets wet it goes really moldy, black and smelly.  You cant easily fix things to it and when it gets damp you have to dig the stuff out and it seems to expand to about ten times its original volume.  I dug a much bigger hole than in this photo to get the lot out and three of the skirting tiles had to come off with it.  Trouble is you end up with a whacking great hole that needs filling up.  I left it to dry for a week or more with the heating on full blast day and night.  Half the problem with the Poles was that they didn’t put the heating on and there were about 5 living there without going to work so the place deteriorated.  I’m particularly pissed off that the leak happened in the first place but the agents contractor fitted a new bath at the end of last year which obviously wasn’t sealed properly and now I have the problem.  Its even more annoying that he charged me £850 for the pleasure.

We found our new favorite Indian restaurant during February, “The Mysore”.  Some guys at work had been kept banging on about how good it was so Claire, Sue and myself gave it a try.  It only cost us £3 for a taxi down there from Sue’s and we got one as it was so cold when we went in.  We had a great meal we all enjoyed, but when we came out it was still cold but also snowing.  Our taxi service originally said 10 minutes but that came and went so I rang them back.  They said it would be at least another 25 minutes because of the snow.  Claire spotted a bus and asked the driver if he went past our house and he did so we all piled onto it and cancelled the taxi.  Strangely, it cost us £4.60 on the bus; no wonder they are so unused.

One of my favorite nights of the month was Sandy’s surprise Birthday party.  It was great to see her and she had no idea at all.  She is quite a character!

And so are some of her friends; Enjoy!

And world peace!

A good time was had by all!

We had such a good meal at Mysore and noticed that they did a Sunday Buffet for £7.95 so Claire arranged to go again with Steve and Jan, Sue and myself.  It wasn’t the same without the snow.  As they only had one guy serving the service was dreadful and they even ran out of plates.  The food was still ok but not the same at the normal menu and they sat us in the most awkward place to get up and out of your seat along the back row.

The work at Melton Mowbray with my parents started to slow down as they finally got all their boxes unpacked.  One of the advantages of going there is that you can bring back a proper Melton Mowbray pork pie from Dickinson and Morris.  There used to be three famous pork pie shops in Melton but eventually the others shut down.  People in Melton always thought that the worst shop seemed to be the last man standing.  I finished my contract at Cerulean towards the end of the month and took a large one into work.  Melton is famous for its pork pies but also for the best stilton cheese in the world and Melton Mowbray hunt cake.

Claire and I finally finished the flat at Oldbrook on Thursday 1st March.  I popped into Newport during the morning to buy a few bits and there were two guys fitting new parking meters by the few spaces outside Boots; joy!

The flat was finished and we showed Adam our new favorite agent our work.  Adam, from Prestige, let Chris and Vanessa’s flat out this month as well and gave us a check for £100 for introducing them to him.  Anyone else want to switch agents?  I will buy you a beer!

The hole in the wall suitably filled and the door curtain hiding the worst.  Last time I had this problem in another flat I cut the hole into a square and fitted studding and plasterboard then skimmed it with filler myself.  This was massively time consuming so tried a different tact.  I filled it with that expanding plastic foam and trimmed back when dry then went over with Smooth it all.  After several normal fillings and sanding it looks as good as new.  Maybe I should try my hand as a plasterer; Loads of money!

The lounge turned out quite nice; Claire has used her modernizing magic again.  All finished and handed over, just in time for our holiday on Saturday to Tenerife for 10 nights.  i said last month that I expected that we would get away during February but underestimated the workload.  Once work had finished, everything seemed to run much faster.  Claire also found a company called EnergyCare that gave us a quote for supplying and fitting loft insulation.  We guess that part of our moldy ceiling problem was inadequate loft insulation.  I had been up there and it is all covered but there is so little room there is no way that I could crawl through the rafters fitting more.  Anyway, they came today to give us a quote.  Our suspicions were correct, we do need an additional 200mm of insulation which they will supply and fit free of charge.  What a result; Claire managed to pick the only 100% government funded loft insulation company in the country.  Try them; we will be getting the warmest lofts in MK from now on.

As I was leaving work at Cerulean, I had the idea to resurrect our curry bash that we used to have when we worked at Lucas.  There were three of us from this group, Dave Clarke, Rob Poultney and myself.  I phoned my old mate that I haven't seen for 9 years, Chris Eels from Birkhampstead by getting his number from my accountant Rashmi.  It was Chris that originally put me onto Rashmi as the best accountant in the country for contractors.  It was actually also Chris that talked me into buying flats in the first place so all this work is thanks to him.  I asked the others if they had any contacts and to my surprise, Rob still goes on the curry bash once a month after all these years and so fired an email off to the curry club.  We ended up with 9 of us all from the old Lucas and to top it all I managed to talk them into going to my new favorite Indian restaurant.  Guess what?  I’m back on the curry club list.  Can’t wait for next month.