Flies in the Loft

I had a bit of a fly infestation in my loft. I didn’t notice it before I was putting my Christmas decoration away, but I must admit that I had seen flies around the house and I just couldn’t think where they came from, now I know.

I went finger-shopping for pest-controllers.

The first one Rentokil was so expensive (they wanted £450), I fopped them off with “I will wait until the infestation gets worse”.
A friend of mine said that I should contact the council and get them out. I looked at the council’s website and couldn’t find it, but when I Googled “MK Council Pest Control” it gave me a link to the “Pest Control” page.

Milton Keynes residents are offered a comprehensive pest control service via our approved vendor SDK Environmental Ltd. To access the service please contact our contractor DialAPest which is part of SDK Environmental and advise them that you are a resident of Milton Keynes. A discounted rate is available for customers in receipt of certain qualifying benefits.

The site specifies the whole price you’ll have to pay, and that’s it. The man came this morning, he was in my house for 5-10 minutes, filled in a worksheet, that I signed, and he got on with it. The only restriction I have is that I am not permitted in my loft for 24 hours. All done for a mere £58.

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Story of a Dead Tumbler Dryer Walking

      

My Tumbler dryer gave up the ghost yesterday – the heating element went – to replace that would have cost £60 plus labour (most properly another £60)
but you can’t find a technician currently, because of the Covid lockdown.

My cleaning lady helped me putting it out at the front of my house, I gave it a “Raincoat” and stuck a note inside telling what was wrong with it. By noon today it had already evaporated. Ghosts are like that, one minute they are there and the next they are gone.

Also yesterday I found a new one in Currys and it only cost £140 and it was delivered just after 12 noon today.

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This is not a gargoyle

I always thought this was called a gargoyle but recently I found out that it’s a grotesque, even though it’s not living up to its ridiculous name.

The difference is:

• Grotesque is the architectural term for statues found on the side of buildings for ornamental purposes.
• Gargoyles are a particular type of grotesque with a handy feature: spouts that carry rainwater away from the building.

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Thanks to Anglian Water

Somewhen between the 24/6/19 and 7.8.19 a not so friendly unknown person turned the water to my ponds on and left it on.

When returning home after my shoulder operation, stay in the care home and with a friend, we found that the water was running in the garden.

While sitting relaxing the phone rang, it was from the Anglian Water, who queried my enormous water usage. I explained my predicament and the lady was very sympathetic, she said they would check the meter again within a fortnight and get back to me.

I was very reluctant to open the letter from Anglian Water; but scraped some courage together; and was pleasantly surprised. All the “leakage”, to the amount of £1095.28, had been written off.

Phew, what a relief! Thanks!

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2018 – what a troublesome year!

I am slightly fed up with 2018. I am wondering what more this year can throw at me.First there was the water damage that forced me and my cat out of my house for one month while the building recovery firm made my house liveable again. While we were in exil, I decided to pop over to Denmark for a short week.

When Coco and I came back home, I had to find someone to do my garden. The lady I found (temporarily only) came with me – to check the flat – in Spain. It had become a dump! Grrrr.
We spend the whole week cleaning the flat for the next lodgers.
I manage to organise that the flat got painted from top to bottom, incl. the outside balcony rails and fixing this and that that had been left and not fixed; like the air-con that had never been serviced.

When I got home I wrote a “Dear John” letter to the keyholder and sacked him.
Luckily, I had another key-holder lined up.
I will meet her in October when I am returning to Spain to finish refurbishing the flat (new sofa, armchair, dishwasher …).

And the saga goes on and on, but I wont bore you any further.

Parking dispute at no.31

There was a person parking on my garage forecourt Sunday-Monday.
I had a doctors appointment at 10am and couldn’t get out of my garage.
I had never seen that car in the area before, so I didn’t know where it came from.

Anyway I got a taxi to and from the surgery and when I was back home the car had gone.
But low and behold, at 2pm the car was back! Swear, swear … more swear!
So I checked online what I could do and everything I read was contradictory.

Hence me writing the following words, printing them and sticking the print onto the windscreen.

Private property of number 31
Please DO NOT PARK here ever again
You owe me £6 for taxi as I couldn’t get my car out this morning

After which the car disappeared.

When I got home late Thursday-Friday night, I found a letter in my letterbox with £20 and a letter from the guilty person:

Dear no. 31,
I extend my sincerest apologies for parking across your garage a couple of days ago.
I mistakenly thought it was part of no.30, but it was gross misjudgement on my part. Your actions were completely justified.

Please accept this as my goodwill gesture to you. I hope it helps bury the hatchet. It’ll never happen again.

You owe me £6 for a taxi, as I couldn’t get my car out this morning.

 

I can only say many thanks the the owner of the car for his/hers kind gesture.

Goodbye traveling Trunk

As of today, I am no longer the owner of this vintage traveling trunk.

I sold it to my Handyman who came this morning to do a lot of work; but we decided to wait with most of the items on my list until after DJH has finished their work. He did though make the ceiling in my downstairs cupboard good; and between us we managed to remove the air went pipe bend from that cupboard. I feel tempted to use it as a flower pot holder in the garden.

 

Emptying my garage and conservatory

I have a gentleman who used to be my neighbour. He comes when I text him to collects all of my PC related rejects. The charity he is involved with regularly sends lorry loads of stuff to somewhere in Africa. It is nice to know that my rejects are not just being flogged on; but actually being re-used.

He came today to pick up: 7 boxes, 3 touch screens till monitors, a couple of till card-readers, 3 dead PCs, 1 laser printer, 1 dead printer and lots of power leads and this and that’s.

My garage and conservatory are now looking rather empty and I can start tidying them up.

I will get rid of more on “Facebook Marketplace”, some for sale and some for free; the more the better!

I checked what would go by advertising “11 mostly white pillow cases” for free, they found a new home within 24 hours. Not bad at all.

Produce from my Garden

My Gardening Friend came today, not only did she cut the lawn, she also harvested the rest of my radishes, one of the giant garlics and all my Spanish onions. There were only 4 radishes left and sadly they had become woody.

Here is some pictures of my baby garlic

    

Plus this tray of Spanish sweet onions (I’ve already eaten 3 yum yum)

 

Dinner and Poker School Evening

I have just had a great dinner/poker school evening with 2 friends. We were supposed to be 5 but one couple couldn’t make it.

Tonight’s menu was my signature dish of chicken legs and onions (cooked in a Dutch oven) with cauliflower-broccoli cheese (not yet published), potato wedges, my raw carrot salad and a nice bottle of Merlot; followed by freshly made decaf coffee.

It was obviously my turn to win; at the end I had 3½ times the starting chips. The last two times we were playing I was in the red.