The Story So Far

It seems to me that my destiny is to be the ‘eternal sufferer’.

No matter what I do; what precautions I take, things are just meant to go wrong.

There was the long saga with my rust-bucket car (deceased), the fence (twice), the guttering on the house (I haven’t told you about that, have I?), the laptop (throws tantrums like a petulant teenagers) and my desktop PC (oldoldoldoldold!) and now the garage wall.

Let me tell you about that wall…

It is an old … very old ,,, crack in the brickwork that dates back more than fifteen years, which is as long as my wife has lived here.

It was never repaired properly (according to the surveyor) but was masterly disguised by someone with an artistic bent.  When the missus bought this place it had been made to look just like any other wall.

Now, after all this time a rather large leak in the garage roof has revealed this wall to be, in fact, a forgery!

Ok. It’s too late to run to the previous owner (long dead,I’m afraid) and punch him in the face, so we braced ourselves for the worst.

Our  garage has an outer and an inner roof. The inner is just a number of one inch boards sealed together and fixed above the joists supporting the whole roof.  Above that is the outer roof. This one is also made up of one inch boards but water proofed, leaded and tarred. It has a life span (so I’m told) of up to fifteen years.

Sadly, it would appear that that fifteen years has long since passed and our waterproofed roof has gone to ‘garage roof heaven’ allowing all of the roof boards to slowly soak up water.  It has taken a long time but now the water, seeking an escape route, has begun to destroy the previous owners artwork allowing us to see the damaged wall.

Quotes fro the repair work are coming in thick and fast!

The work the are specifying ranges from stripping the roof down to the rafters and totally re-roofing to simply applying a heavy duty one-piece rubber sheet.

The rubber sheet seems to be favourite price-wise but, on the other hand, for £1900 we could have a new roof.

What do you think?

To other news now …

You may have heard that snowflakes have been seen in Britain!

The ensuing chaos has been widely reported and once again made us (Brits) look like bunch of idiots.

        Snowflakes here,
        Snowflakes there,
        A Country in chaos,
        Every-f***ing-where!

Am I? Or Am I Not?

I had my calls cancelled today (except this evening's) so I popped to the corner shop to buy myself a chocolate treat.

As I came out, an old man who was just going in, pointed at me and said "Ah!"

Then he said "Oh!"

I stepped to one side as he entered the shop.

"Sorry?" I said.

Without even looking at me he said "I thought you were someone, but you're not".

That was a 'deep' statement and as I walked home I couldn't help but wonder 'What or who the hell am I?'

I'll have to wait until the plumber comes to fix the leaky radiator and ask him!

A Moral? Are You Kidding?

"Morning Tom" I said.

"Morning er, morning ..." he responded.

"George" I said, always willing to lend a hand.

"That's right! Morning! How's the family?"

"Oh, you know ... all still ticking over. Kid's are back in college now so it's quiet around the house. How's your wife?"

"Grumpy as sin this morning. I said to her, I said 'What 's the matter with you Margaret?' and she as near as damn it chased me out of the house", he said with a pained expression on his face.

"Isn't your wife called Glenda?"

"That's why she was grumpy! I'd been calling her Margaret all morning. She reckons I've got wossname ... sounds like a set of false teeth ... what's it called?"

"Denshures?"

"Dementia! That's it. Dementia. Want's me to see a doctor".

This sounded serious so I said that maybe he should ... "You know, Tom. Just for peace of mind".

"Or the loss of it", he spat back.  "Look! I've been married for fifty years and I can remember nearly every danmed minute of it."

"Oh!" I said. "That bad!"

"No, no, no! It's been great ... so she tells me".

"Do you remember yesterday?"

"... all my troubles seemed so far away, now it looks ..."

"Tom?"

"Sorry. I get side tracked sometimes.  Did you know that for nearly all of that fifty years, every night when we went to bed she would lie curled up on her left side and I would snuggle up behind her and wrap my arms around her ... ".

"Aw! That's nice".

"... and every night she'd say 'Wouldn't do that if I was you! I might fart and blow your balls off!"

"Oh! You know what? That's the kind of story that should have a moral in it somewhere".

"A moral? Are you kidding me? I know the guy writing this!"

"That's a bit harsh, isn't  it? I'm a classy writer".

"Hah! That coming from someone who spells 'dentures' D-E-N-S-H-U-R-E-S"

"You sod! That's the last time I write about you!"

"Bet you it isn't!"



(I've had a small break from blogging in order to concentrate preventing my garage wall falling down ... but I'm back!) 

BLUCK!

Well hello there!

Welcome to the New Year!

Pull up a weekend and make yourself comfortable.

Take the weight off and let's gnaw over the bones of the year that was.

Was it all that you expected?  Nah, mine neither. I seem to recall rather too many things going wrong, costing money or just generally pissing me off  as opposed to anything happening that could, even in a half-hearted way, be described as being good.

No, no ... that's not strictly true, if I think on it. Some really good things did happen but, hey, this isn't an X-rated blog, so I can't tell you!

But on the whole ... it wasn't a good year.

My car ... the one that was always just a tyre tread away from disaster ... died! I was forced to run around like a headless chicken trying to find an affordable replacement within a week, or face losing a lot of money.

No car, no work!

January 12 started off with my garden fence panels (6' X 6') being blown to smithereens by gale force winds. £400-£500 repair costs.

March saw my soon to be deceased vehicle's suspension popping it's mount (£300, but could have been worse).

April ...

Oh God this is so depressing!

Gnaw over you own year. Mine is making me feel ill!

Oh, and this year hasn't started too well either.

I forgot to put my numbers on for the midweek lotto yesterday!

Guess who would have had 4 correct numbers and BOTH bonus numbers?

OK, so it wasn't the jackpot but would have been a nice little sum.

Lady Luck really hates me.

But never mind, eh!

I still have my blog-frie...

Hey?

Where'd everybody go?

(BLUCK = Bad Luck)

Better Late Then Never!