Gertsamtkunstwerk

More money than sense

Typical of the rudeness of stuck-up neighbours.

We were woken at 7 am on Monday by work commencing in the garden at the back. At 7.30 I had to don a dressing gown and stick my head out of the window to request politely "No power tools before 8 am." Interestingly, I got a nod and compliance from the builder, who knew precisely what I meant.

Yesterday I took a photo of RSJs:

I told Jimmy to keep an eye on the party wall.

This evening, I take more photos:

It seems that they are extending their back room by resting it on the party garden wall. We can see through the garden wall. It's a garden wall; it's held up by dust and ivy. I would love to know how much they are spending on this job.  They've never knocked on our door to inform us of the building work, let alone have their architect or surveyor inspect the wall from our side. Maybe they did from next door (it's a three way party wall), but maybe it's in better condition next door...

I can't say I want to be underneath it when it crumbles under the weight - don't yet know whether it's going up two storeys. I would even less like to be in their extended back room when it collapses. I shall get onto Lambeth Building Control tomorrow, but I'm not messing around, I'm shall get onto a solicitor on Friday if Building Control are less than helpful

I don't want this hassle in my life. But I expect my neighbours at the back really don't want hassle or extra expense. If only they had shown neighbourly consideration in the first place, they wouldn't have gone ahead with such a ludicrous building project.  I know that wall; I suspect that a heavy wet load of washing or an extra strong gust of wind could send it falling.

I'm not sure about the law on Party Walls and Planning Permission. I don't particularly want to. I shall just refer it to a solicitor - if anyone can recommend a good relevant solicitor handy for my area (Brixton) do please let me know.

Freecycle Gert Cottage Style

As we find stuff, we dump it. At the end of "Gert Cottage Boulevard". So far, a computer monitor, an office chair and a radio-alarm clock have disappeared. The books have been rifled through. I appreciate that the Statistics and Accountancy books, and the empty Jewel cases, have limited appeal. but if you are one of the ten readers from the MRSRWCRA who read mmofm, we are dumping god condition stuff on a help yourself basis. If you are planning a Jumble Sale in SW2, please contact us. We have jumble but are too lazy to seek you out.

Sorry, this is a local post for local people.

But seriously, if you have a Jumble Sale, as long as it's not for Anti-Abortion or something, email me, and we can happily give you loads of stuff - books? I have dozens!!!!

It's kind of like Freecycle, but without exhausting the neurons that drive t'internet. It's a Brixton Village Freecycle. A few months ago, someone left out Skis to 'help yourself'. Oh, we're dead posh round here...

Seeking a life of leisure

It's going from molehill to mountain. The quiet predictable routine of my boring but satisfactory life has plunged into disruption and disroutine.

Jimmy has far too much time on his hands and it's not doing me any good. He's up as I go out to work, washing windows. He's washed all the curtains in the house. He's doing stuff. Like dusting and polishing my dressing table; re-arranging the bottles of body lotion - after years of amassing an impressive lake of body lotion, I have suddenly developed an almost obsessive enthusiasm about smearing unction over my body twice a day: I found 20 bottles in various locations. I managed to escape on Thursday without being nagged to take fruit to work; later in the day I received a severe ticking off, for 'sneaking out the house without a banana'.

Friday is supposed to be my day off, the day I mess around on the internet. Fat chance. Yes, I had to go to Streatham to settle the balance on our new furniture (of which we currently await delivery). Whilst there we looked for a toolbox. Now, colour me stupid, but I would have thought that a standard traditional toolbox would be easy to find. You know, traditional, slits down the middle to allow tiered compartments to open in a zig-zag way. I would have placed money on Woolworths selling them; failing that, Argos. There wasn't even one in the Argos catalogue. Jimmy thinks he will get one easily enough from Halfords, but Halfords is the opposite direction.

We did go into Sainsburys Local to search for puddings, but swiftly left again. I may write to their customer services. I do not especially want to be confronted by aggressive rap music when I walk into Sainsburys. I don't think it's especially the image that Sainsburys Corporately want to project. It probably attracts aggressive anti-social oiks. There's no shortage of alternative suppliers from which to choose. I don't choose to spend my time and money in somewhere that plays aggressive 'music'.

Back home, and it was non-stop work, clearing and cleaning the main bedroom. Yes, necessary due to the imminent arrival of new bed, and I can't complain about the logic of it. On Thursday, my colleagues, as is customary, wished me a good weekend, and I replied, I shall be returning to work next week to relax. I wasn't joking.

No time for internet, got to purge and blitz dining/computer room. TTFN.

Letting go

The house is a mess.

This is because even with out the CFS I am by nature lazy. And Jimmy has been working too long and drinking too much. It's easier to procrastinate.

But, let's be candid, a lot is to do with hoarding. I hate throwing things out. Part of me is worried about landfill, but frankly, it's too embarrassing for Freecycle and too shabby for Charity shops. I have a laptop, now, so I have thrown away two computer keyboards and we left a monitor by the roadside for 'help yourself'. Three house phones (broken) have been binned, although one retained because of its quaint ability to be used without electricity, no trivial concern. I have retained my first brick-like mobile for nostalgia, but put-to-recycling rolls of half-used Christmas wrapping paper dating back a decade. I still have my referee's whistle from 1970-something, and when I spotted my football boot rubber I did wonder what had happened to my Bryan Robson rubber. I told myself it didn't matter, one doesn't need to hang onto bric a brac in the delusion that there is symbolic value.

I feel I could ditch the case of cassettes taped off the radio during the 1980s, but I can't quite bring myself to that. It would be throwing away my memories.

And then there's clothes. I have approximately fifty tops that are appropriate for work, restaurants, concert halls etc. Perhaps a handful are beginning to look a trifle faded. I also have about thirty t-shirts, football shirts etc that are comfortable and practical for wearing the house (and remember, I am at home more days than I am out). I very bravely ditched seven M&S silk t-shirts I distinctly remember buying to wear under suits, in Ealing. In Autumn 1998. they have long been relegated to the 'wear around the house' pile. But I don't - into the bin. I have thrown three skirts from the mid-90s, because I haven't worn them in god knows how long. I tried one on, it fitted but didn't flatter.

Even so, I still have too many clothes. I ought to employ a strictly one-in one-out system. I can identify lacunae in the wardrobe - decent summer skirt and trousers, that aren't suits, for work etc. I refuse to let go the Sweatshirts, four of which date from 1990 or earlier. Or a yellow jumper I bought as a student. I no longer wear yellow. It never ventures outside the house. But I can't let it go because I'm scared I may need it sometime, just in case the other twenty or so jumpers and cardigans just won't do. I have about a dozen gorgeous pull-'em-up-stick-'em-out bras, and insist of wearing, round the house, misfits, with tired elastic or a missing underwire.

The truth is, I have too many clothes.

But Jimmy is even worse than me!

Leave me alone...!

Half-witted interfering neighbour called round while I was in the bath and spoke to Jimmy.

She's come up with this idea to change the name of "Gert Cottage Boulevard" (not its real name), our little private drive to four cottages, to Laundry Road.

Over my dead, or at least inert, body.

Laundry Road - where the scrubbers live. Laundry Road - why not go further and call it Gas Works Street. Or go the whole hog and call it "Red Light Brothel Lane where you can buy your slap'n'tickle."

Yes, I am going to say, it will affect property prices to be saddled with such a crap address.

But I've come up immediately with a list of fifty organisations - excluding friends and family - who will need notifying of a change of address. Am I going to have pay for that? In cash and time? Not on your nelly.

And that doesn't include Fire, Ambulance, and Police. Sorry, if there is the slightest risk of any of those being delayed looking for somewhere that isn't on the map, due to some ridiculous notion of changing a perfectly good road name, well, that makes it an idiot idea.

Frankly, if people have nothing better to do with their time than fart around on ridiculous half-witted notions, well there's a Youth Club across the road that would probably welcome a bit of extra help. Although they would probably prefer people with some semblance of reality; not just interfering busybodies living on another planet.

Fruit flies

I have never had such an experience of being over run by fruit flies. From time to time, if you leave a wine glass unwashed for a few days with dribbles in the bottom, you really notice them, especially in the heat of summer.

But it's getting ridiculous. Admittedly, we are not 100% operating theatre clean, but we are making a real effort at the moment to keep things clean. I poured myself a glass of wine, and left it for maybe five, ten minutes at the most, and six of the bastards had leaped in. It was a bloody good Shiraz...actually only a Vin du Pays D'Oc (but proper stuff from France, not the crap they pass off to supermarkets), and it was the last glass, so I'm a bit miffed.

I don't think I have ever have six flies in a wine glass. Certainly not in winter, certainly not indoors.

Jimmy thinks it's it do with the composting bin, which is kept at the bottom of the garden but not very far from the downstairs shower-room/loo.

I want to blame the bastard builders, but wonder if it's anything to do with the weird weather. I wonder if it's just us, or is it a widespread problem, and if we get the rumoured cold snap, they'll go away? Although, frankly, the forecast for night-time temperatures falling to - woo - minus one doesn't seem cold enough to me.

Everyday minutiae

I went out. Not very far, because I couldn't. "Gert Cottage Boulevard" was blocked. Not just to vehicular traffic but also to lil' ol' me.

I requested the crane be moved and was told by a man high in the sky that it would be ten or fifteen minutes. I expressed my anger that ten or fifteen minutes was well beyond the bounds of acceptability. I had an angry confrontation with a man on the ground who sneeringly and patronisingly informed me that ten or fifteen minutes is what it takes to move such a vehicle. I dare say that's correct, but I aver there is a bigger point being missed. I said I was calling the police because he was holding me prisoner against my will (Drama Queen? Moi?)

I discovered that in actual fact I could exit by crossing the site. Nice of Arsehole-on-the-Ground to have told me. I went into the site office and played merry hell, explaining that it was in no way an acceptable situation. If a fire engine or emergency ambulance were to come, ten or fifteen minutes simply was not good enough. I was told that fire engines don't come in fifteen minutes. Thankfully I don't know the accuracy of this, but the last time I had an emergency ambulance it had arrived in about five; there was a news story the other day criticising a situation where an ambulance took 18 minutes. Besides, sometimes when one requires an emergency vehicle, sometimes it isn't possible to go out and give prior notice to Anti-Social Neighbours.

I went to the doctors for a discussion about my CICA claim, and on my return I attempted to gain access again to the site office, only to find the way blocked by a a sort of trolley/ladder thing. Another builder lacking the standard quota of braincells suggested that I squeeze and crawl under the mini-scaffold. As if...I then remembered that there was another entrance so I crossed the site - without challenge - and entered the office block, where yet another arsehole said in 'mocking tones' "What now?" . Sharply I told him there was no 'what now' about it when his company were trapping me. I spoke to the Como site manager, Tony, who on a personal level is a pleasant and friendly man, but, as I have said before, it's warm words and bullshit.

It is total lack of consideration for them to imagine that having a lorry blocking pedestrian let alone vehicular access to my home all day is not something I should be informed of in advance. As I explained,  it's partly about emergency access, which needs no explaining as being of paramount importance, but actually it's also about the trivial: shopping, deliveries, visitors. It does not require any great effort to knock on the door and pre-warn us.

I also said I was very upset by the rudeness and attitude of people on site. I should have added that the Poles and Indians are with exception polite and courteous, the English, almost without exception are patronising and insulting. In a sense,  the sneering and contempt is almost worse than the physical and logistic inconvenience.

In between, I went to the doctor's surgery and spent a while in the waiting room. For some reason, I decided to peruse the leaflets and posters. Bad move! Some were potentially relevant, such as pain management for fibromyalgia, and Restless Leg Syndrome, but when you imagine yourself to have malaria, erectile dysfunction, teenage pregnancy and info on the PCT in Portuguese it's time to put the imagination to sleep.

And the worst  - "Anxious about having your womb examined?" Well, I wasn't before, but now I jolly well am...!

Crime victim

It is with very great gravity that I have to report that, yet again, the residents of Gert Cottage have been the innocent victim of a crime.

Someone nicked our wheelie bin.

Last night at about 2 am Jimmy heard the sound of a wheelie bin being wheeled past the window. He thought it a bit odd, but at 2 am one isn't inclined to leap out of bed, and challenge a wheelie-bin pusher with "Oi what are you doing?"

And when he left the house it was gone. He did a quick check round the neighbouring houses but, unsurprisingly, our upstanding neighbours hadn't crept out under cover of night. Jimmy reckons it was stolen to be used as a getaway vehicle in an unrelated crime.

Later I phoned the borough environmental services helpline* to report it stolen and request a new one. Perhaps with Jimmy's conspiracy theory on my mind I said, "Should I report it to the police?" and immediately thought "God, I'm stupid...". But the operator said "Yes please, and could you let us know the CAD number (crime number)". If I do, I'll get a letter from Victim Support.

I think Victim Support do a marvellous job and I also recognise that they do offer counselling to all crime victims without making value judgements about what is serious and isn't. For example, a theft of a wheelie bin might in some cases be the final straw of a traumatic saga of harassment and intimidation. However, I assure you that I am not traumatised but just irritated that we'll have to leave our rubbish in bags, which probably won't be collected.

In other crime victim news, I stepped out of the lift today to come face to face with my MilkSnatcher who looked me up and down in a contemptuous manner so favoured by catty teenage girls. If that isn't an admission of guilt, what is!

And I think I have collected my second enemy in a week. The other evening I stepped out of the building and was vaguely aware of somebody sounding off in a despising tone. I was rather shocked to then hear my name spat out with some venom. I didn't know her, and I don't go round trying to upset people at work, well apart from my own team, but that's not trying, that just happens. So I'm really puzzled as to what I could have done to make a complete stranger (albeit one I share a building with - along with about 4,000 others) hate me. It can't be work related, and I don't recognise her from my local area, so I'm at a complete loss as to know why...All I can say is, if it's work related, there are procedures. And if it's not work-related, it shouldn't be brought to work, even if we were technically on the public highway.

*by the way, Option 1 - Streetcare and Recycling doesn't seem the obvious choice for household rubbish related enquiries. But process of eliminating Options 2-4 makes me think it is...Plain English, please

Purple house

Last and previous summers (2004 and 2005) we were plagued by the curse of tenants from hell. Colombian Drug Dealers, Jimmy decided. They held barbecues, initially fired by paraffin. This amused Danny, who used to live next door, a professional barbecuer to Royalty and Filmstars, and Jimmy, an ex-professional purveyor of paraffin and related products.

It was the burnt meat that got to me, especially the smell that lingered in my house. It seemed they only had barbecues when the wind blew from theirs to mine. One day at 3 am I called over the wall "Please could you keep the noise down" and Senora Foghorn called back "Don't call the police, you won't call the police, they won't like your cannabis plant"*

We had a series of petty acts of revenge planned for this summer, to coincide with the barbecue season. We thought about creosoting the fence...woops, still needs doing. We thought about leaving the lid off the compost bin. We thought about burning our garden cuttings, when the wind blew from us to them. And then there's the Noise Squad, the Drugs Squad, Immigration, complaints about the Environmental Health Consequences of Overcrowding, the complaints about a business seemingly being run from domestic premises.

Bastards moved out in March.

The house (at least, I think it's this one - have to keep an eye on the value of one's equity...) has been obviously unoccupied since. Lack of curtains, light coming on for an exactly an hour same time every late evening. Lack of furniture. Yellow Pages abandoned outside. We haven't drawn our downstairs back curtains all summer. We've walked around in various states of nakedness, inside and out.

Summer's over, there are new occupants. It seemed they moved in yesterday. I heard a loud voice and my heart sunk. Although, on further investigation the loud voice appeared to be a sister or friend helping with the move. sounded very Clapham, all a bit if-I-talk-posh-I-sound-intelligent, probably working in the vacuous end of paramedia. The sister that is. the person in charge of box-unpacking was somewhat less stentorian.

* I have been told, rightly or wrongly that having a cannabis plant** in one's garden is not illegal
** it's no longer there - it's an annual

More about Tesco

The new Tesco opened locally in a damp squib. One Sunday Jimmy donned his false beard and burqa and ventured in for ready meals and came back empty-handed. Milk is more expensive than in the local, Asian-run, convenience stores. Whenever he or I pass the shop seems deserted of customers. Not that we pass very often; even though we live closer than just about anyone else, it's not a sensible way to get home. Except from the doctors or Post Office. Footfall past is, by my observation of eleven years, minimal.

There is a cash machine, which I have noted, as a cheaper alternative to paying £1.50 in a convenience store or walking to the erstwhile nearest free one.

Turns out that the man who goes to refill the cash machine has been robbed more than once. The Crime Prevention officer has advised Tesco to install CCTV but they can't be bothered. There's a gang who watch the machine. Perhaps they'll also be mugging people who use the cash machine. Or get cash-back in-store. No CCTV, no crime prevention.

Soon, Carphone Warehouse will open. And their customers will be mugged for their brand new phones.

When the rich move into their £300k jerry-built box-size flats in 30 Streatham Place, they'll be easy targets for the scrotey scumbags who have been decanted into the nearby area in order to prey on the superrich residents of Thirty Streatham Place.

The Regeneration Project are furious at the mini crimewave that has been visited upon our area.

Warm words, bullshit

If it's not Tesco it's the other lot of wankers, Como working for MacNiven and Cameron, working for Develica.

Half past seven this morning they started unloading paving slabs outside our house, using the back gate to the site, using heavy machinery.

There is a principle under English Law that people should be entitled to a quiet enjoyment of sunday. It is specifically against the Planning Consent to carry out building works on a Sunday (or overnight). Getting the matter resolved and stopped is difficult enough; if it is stopped, under pressure, there is no acknowledgement of the fact that people have had their lives disrupted, sometimes seriously so. I'm reluctant to use the word 'compensation' because it immediately gets dismissed as being 'money-grabbing' or 'part of the compensation culture'. But they cannot restore what they have stolen - peace, rest, sleep - so money acts as a proxy restitution. And more importantly, if they were required by law to pay an amount equivalent to the rental value of the property whose residents they have disturbed, this would act as a heavy disincentive to anti-social behaviour. (If it were a teenage hoodie, they would be ASBO'd: not so easy to ASBO smug white middle-class men for their anti-social behaviour which is worse than teenagers by a degree of magnitude). Enough compensation to pay for a two week holiday somewhere quiet and peaceful would be a small acknowledgement of the disturbance we have had to endure for a year.

There is another issue. Our area used to be plagued by prostitutes (and there are signs they are returning). In general, this just meant condoms littering the ground which are just unpleasant. Very occasionally we would realise that business was being conducted literally on our doorstep.

About five years ago the windows to my out house were smashed and broken into as a shelter for prostitute and punter; two years ago, when I was at the depth of my illness, sleeping all day and then unable to sleep at night, I was sitting on the sofa and heard a woman screaming as she was flung with considerable force against our front door, and a man's voice shouting angrily. We called the police, who agreed it was almost certainly prostitute and punter/pimp, and advised us if we ever hear such noises again to call them again.

What we have experienced recently is builders shouting ta all hours outside our house. If we followed the police advice to the letter, we should be calling them. Clearly common sense has to prevail; if they look builders, they almost certainly are builders, and thus, not a police matter. But at what point is my checking to see who they are, and asking them to move away, a breach of common sense. At what point am I endangering myself and my home by taking the common sense approach

Oh, and there is a crack in our front window. Naturally, I expect that to be replaced by the Como/MacNiven and Cameron/Develica...

30 Streatham Place

May I just point out to anybody who hits on this blog as a result of a search for the jerry-built crappy flats at Thirty Streatham Place, I wouldn't bother wasting your money on them, because you will have to put up with living on top of a Tesco store which cares nothing abouut whatever noise and anti-social behaviour they impose on their neighbours.

You also know that the block opposite - Arkwright House and the shops - is going to be demolished next year and there is a massive building project planned for that site. Oh, and the ex-petrol station next to McDonalds is also in the planning process. More noisy disruptive building works.

My apologies to regular readers - have blog, will manipulate google. Everything I say is true

The Ongoing Tesco Saga

See Dear Tesco

Because they started work at 7.30 this morning (according to Jimmy) and because their drill was going at 13:45, I replied:

Dear Steven Phillips

This is still a wholly inadequate reply.

Firstly, I am not a 'customer'; I am writing as someone who has had the anti-social behaviour of Tesco imposed on me irrespective of choice. So please do not patronise  me by calling me a 'customer'.

Secondly,  the paragraph  "When an Enforcement Officer agrees to undertake enquiries on behalf of one of our customers, we are unable to make direct comment to that customer until we are informed that all investigations have been concluded. No customer details are released until that time " is a complete abrogation of responsibility. Please do not try and pretend that some part of the Data Protection Act means you are unable to respond to my complaint. As you are no doubt aware, Local Authority Noise Enforcement sections are inundated with requests for help, especially in hot weather such as we have been having lately.

Thirdly, irrespective of whether or not my local authority are taking enforcement action, the fact remains that as I write, Saturday 13:45, your contractors are acting illegally in continuing their building work to the extent that it is encroaching on my right to enjoy the peace of my home. Previously, Tesco may have pleaded ignorance; I have now drawn it to your attention twice - this is the third time - and I do not believe there is any defence in law to continuing illegal acts having been notified that they are illegal.

As it is clear that Tesco have no intention of acting in a considerate way to neighbours, I feel that I am left with a choice of options. One is to consult my solicitor, which I shall do on Monday afternoon unless I receive a sensible reply to my correspondence. The second is to organise a leafletting campaign, including a picket of the store on Friday, its opening day, which I am perfectly capable of doing. Thirdly is merely to alert the local and national media to the sheer contempt in which Tesco holds ordinary people.

Finally, you have not acknowledged my request to meet with your store manager to discuss issues regarding the safety and enjoyment of my home. These issues include noise and parking: I am very concerned that Tesco customers will park in a way that will block access - including emergency access - to my house and that of my immediate neighbours. Your corporate silence on this matter will be included in any press release I write for the media.

I look forward to a constructive reply. In the meantime, I shall copy this to the local residents associations.

Yours sincerely

Gert Blog

I sent this at 13:58.

Dear Tesco

Thursday
Dear Madam/Sir

I live immediately adjoining the site at Streatham Place which is scheduled to be a new Tesco store opening 28 July. We had to endure drilling and hammering beyond five pm last Saturday, and we are having to endure it now at quarter past nine in the evening, quite contrary to LB Lambeth's policy on building noise.

I have witnesses that heard one of your builders say that they were perfectly aware of the rules, but by the time anybody tried to take any action, they've finished the job and moved on, so it doesn't matter. So much for Tesco's Ethical and Corporate Responsibility Policy.

I am very concerned at the impact that the new Tesco store will have on my peace and homelife, and therefore request a meeting with the store manager. She or he can contact me on xxxxxxxx so that we can arrange a meeting at a time that suits me. At that meeting we can agree a number of actions that I will expect Tesco to take if their shop or their customers have a detrimental effect upon my home life. I will take notes, and I will expect a written confirmation from Tesco of what is agreed in that meeting.

I will, of course, contact Lambeth's Noise Control officers on the morning of Friday 14 July.

I look forward to your prompt response

Yours faithfully

Monday
Wot, no Dear Gert!

Thank you for your email.

I was very sorry to learn about your recent experiences and I sincerely apologise for the inconvenience and upset that this has caused you.

In order to organise your request I would suggest that you contact our Head Office on 01992 632 222.

If you have any further queries please do not hesitate to contact us at customer.service@tesco.co.uk quoting XXXXXXXX.

Kind Regards

Helen Bowie
Tesco Customer Service

Monday evening

Dear Helen Bowie

This is really not an professional response. Please could you (or a colleague) forward my message to Head Office. It is quarter past ten in the evening and this building work is continuing.

I am not prepared to be fobbed off. I work during the day so it is not convenient to telephone your Head Office. Furthermore, I want everything in writing. I have been informed that a Lambeth Case Officer is dealing with the noise aspect of this case. But there are other matters, too.

If I do not receive confirmation by close of play on Tuesday, I shall escalate the matter.

Your sincerely

And now I have to sit around unrelaxed enduring the delightful summer music of hammer on metal and waiting for a hone call to inform me that a Noise Officer is en route.

Tesco think that if they fob people off for long enough, they just give in or give up. Which is probably true, because people generally have complicated enough lives as it is and often can't deal with the added stress.

Money grabbing bastards.

Another reason to boycott Tesco...

...they redefine 'bastard builders'.

My local authority, like most others, has guidelines for building sites which states

Generally, we restrict the hours when noisy activity can take place to:

* Monday-Friday, 8am-6pm
* Saturday, 8am-1pm.

The main contractors at 30 Streatham Place know this full well, and thus keep religiously to it, almost to the point of piss-taking - except for when they don't stick to it, and lie about it.

It doesn't apply to Tesco who had their builders on site until nearly six pm on Saturday, and are currently on site with heavy noisy machinery and hammering. I have witnesses that heard one of their builders say "We are fully aware of what the council says but by the time they get onto us we're out of there, it doesn't matter..."

Doesn't matter when they capricioualy and callously disturb the peace and homelives of local residents who they expect to be their customers. Of course it doesn't matter. The immediate local residents make up a tiny proportion of the expected footfall, especially when there is the opportunity for so much passing trade from the South Circular. And anyway the local residents will soon move on.

It doesn't surprise me in the slightest. Their main store at Brixton felt the need to expand when Sainsbury's opened at Clapham Common. They did the building work at night, to the misery of their neighbours. Their response...if we built during the day it would affect our customers.

It's all money, money, money. People do not matter in their sick world.

Bloody neighbours

Why are people so thick?

Not sufficient with having building noise five and a half days a week, we have the O'Bumpkins next door, breezed in on the last RyanAir flight, playing bloody country and western music, wouldya believe it, in the garden on a Sunday afternoon.

Bloody short-term tenants, here today and gone tomorrow, no investment in the area, no sense that this a very densely populated area. And now that the bloody tenants at the back have departed with their paraffin-fuelled barbecues of rancid meat, no one else sits in their back garden imposing their tastes on others.

Both houses rented by avaricious capitalists determined to make a fast buck at everyone else's expense; sod the people who live in the area year in year out and give their time and energy to making it a nice place to live

So far bad day

It doesn't help the day get off to a good start when the building site starts work - illegally and noisily - at quarter past seven. Especially when one has slept with one's windows open. Being that the weather forecast is for hot and sticky nights.

I emailed the Property Developers a letter on 1 June. They have not even acknowledged receipt. I have emailed again with a notification that if they do not provide a substantive response on Monday I shall take the matter further. I'm debating whether to approach the South London Press, who always appreciate pre-written stories or to go straight to the national media. Or other action...

The letter is in the extended entry.

And then I get cold-called. I'm usually cautious in answering the phone, but we are expecting calls, nd the caller-display didn't show up.

It was extremely difficult to understand what the cold-caller was saying. She was calling from France, and, I think, reading from a script that was probably phonetically written out. I demanded to know why she was calling my number, I had opted into theTelephone Preference Service, and how dare she disturb the privacy of my home. I demanded to know the name of the company and I really could not understand what she was saying. I asked her to spell it out, and she said "I don't understand you!" As I explained that I wanted a name so I could write and complain, she started to spout the script of 'thank you and goodbye and sorry to have disturbed you.' I asked her how dare she do that when she hadn't answered my question, could I speak with someone who spoke English. "Of course Madam," she said ingratiatingly and a few moments later the line went dead. As far as I could gather they are a French property company who want to invite me and my husband to an exhibition in our area.

What connects the two of course is greed and utter disregard for people's homelife. Greed, greed, greed. Of course we all want to earn a living, and money makes the world go round. Thankfully, I am a believer in karma, and I believe that all these people will get their come-uppance at some time. But some of us have values that are wider than sheer greed.

But the other thing that puzzles me is why cold-calling companies use people who have difficulty communicating with the target. It's happened before. Some company in Croydon called me and the caller had such a heavy West African accent that I had to keep asking her to repeat herself. I would hazard a guess that I am more familiar with heavy West African accents than most people. I can't see how it can be an effective sales technique to spew unintelligible stuff at a potential customer.

A part of me feels a bit guilty at being so angry at the caller this morning, she's only doing a job and so on. But ultimately, we do have to take responsibility for our jobs, however menial. Genuine call-centre staff are different. If they contact you they immediately identify which organisation they are from, often check that it's convenient to call and one suspects that they have been trained that most people do not like cold-calls but are prepared to talk to organisations with which they have an existing relationship.

Built environment

I have moaned on occasion about the monstrous carbuncle that is being built on my doorstep. I objected to the plans; our objections were only partly successful in that we succeeded in having some of the bulk reduced. We are currently experiencing stress as a result of the building works - having left the bedroom window a centimetre open last night I was duly awoken at three minutes past eight by intolerable noise coming from the building site. But I know that will pass eventually.

I accept that I am particularly resentful because this is an inappropriate building in an inappropriate setting. It fronts onto Streatham Place, the South Circular, but it backs onto an enclave of cottages - mine is from the 1830s, a neighbour's is from the 1780s, and there is no indication that the developers gave a stuff about respecting a rare gem in the cityscape.

I also recognise that there is a desperate need for more housing, and I do believe that where possible, it should be built on brownfield sites. Nor am I so naive that I don't understand the basics of capitalism and the economic system.

The whole process so far has been illuminating. The derisory consultation they undertook only after their initial plans had been rejected, and they realised that they were dealing with articulate educated people rather than what they had no doubt assumed, apathetic thickos. The absolute lack of communication from the company involved in developing the site, NacNiven and Cameron, and their disgrace of a project manager, Stuart Fanti, whose response to any suggestion that they act as Considerate Builders and Good Neighbours has been met with a standard response of "We are working within the law". Yes, of course, Stuart, actually you're not. Noise from the site starts at 7.15 am. A suggestion from me that the company should offer some gesture of Goodwill has been stonewalled - perhaps an offer to clean the house once a month, including the windows, the car, and the soft furnishings has been ignored.

There has never been an attempt to communicate with the local residents - all approaches have been made by us, searching on the net for their details. Naturally, they fail to respond on Saturdays, because that's not a working day, despite the fact they are happy to have noisy machinery working on site. They have deliberately positioned their noisy machinery at the rear of the site, with some lame excuse about deliveries,  demonstrating utter contempt for their neighbours.

They really do not care about the neighbourhood; once the ugly box is built, they will leave the site and move on, and it doesn't matter. They have an "artist's impression" of what the site will look like when finished, complete with twee pictures of people strolling happily on the street. All white. It's only a small point, but this is Brixton. Of no consequence but clearly indicative of the contempt in which they hold the local area. But they don't even know that they're in Brixton, choosing to describe it as Streatham. I also love the way they fail to represent the reality of the traffic congestion that creates bumper-to-bumper gridlock for two hours in the morning and evening, right outside the development. Not much point having car parking if you can't get in or out at school-run/travel-to-work time.

But that is all transitory. They describe the development as

Built, designed and finished to a high specification, Thirty Streatham Place's range of apartments will exceed your expectations

Well, I have been watching these flats being jerry-built over the past few months and even without any specialist expertise I can see that they are shonky. Since when has metal girders surrounded by breeze blocks, with a thin veneer of brickwork been high specification? As for the concrete...! Further along the South Circular the NDC is embarking on a £100 million plus scheme to demolish many blocks of flats because of the fundamental structural and safety problems presented by spalling concrete - this site from "The Concrete Centre -  the central development organisation for the UK cement and concrete industry" suggests strongly that the prevention of spalling is work in progress.

And yet they are marketing these as luxury apartments. I really can't see how they differ from the damp uninhabitable council flats that will be demolished further along the road, except that they will be selling for a third of a million. And some suckers are going to be suckered into buying them. They'll probably get 99-year leases, which won't be worth the paper they're written on, because they will have to be demolished about the time  my brick-built  freehold cottage reaches its bicentenary.  I cannot see the attraction of living in a steel-framed  concrete sarcophagus, but then I live in a properly built house.

And their website doesn't even mention the problems with the water table in the area, caused by the local underground river, the cessation of heavy water-intensive industry (the tannery and brewery) and the Artesian wells, nor the fact that rain water from, for example, my property, drains onto their site.

Hello Google.

The view from Gert Cottage

That's from the back garden looking to the front.

 

I need a drink...!

 

The rolling acres at Gert Cottage