Approximately ten feet from my front window is a building site. It used to be a car showroom. In a year or two it will be hundreds of overpriced jerry-built yuppie flats. In the meantime it is a building site.
This morning they erected a two storey portacabin directly outside my window. Photos will be taken tomorrow...
When I came home at seven oclock there was diesel generator (we think) running, directly outside my neighbours' bedroom window and audible, above the TV, from my house. At ten o'clock it was still running. At five past ten I phoned the Noise Patrol. They should be here by eleven.
To be honest, I do not know what they can do; I am fairly certain that it probably isn't a statutory nuisance. I shall be onto Planning in the morning seeking advice about what we can do about inconsiderate builders.
I am of no doubt they will pass me to another department. I do not expect to get very far very soon. The building work began in earnest this week. I shall be watching them like a hawk. Unfortunately, there isn't much one can do during normal working hours, except grin-and-bear it, but if they dare take liberties, I want them to know we will not tolerate it. Hopefully, by being proactive from the outset we will send a clear signal to the builders that they mess with us at their peril.
I fully expect that this, together with the sauna that is my workplace, will send me into a nervous breakdown. So I thought I might as well blog the process and you can watch me fall apart, car-crash bloggery.
I shall then have to decide whether to sue my employer or to sue the developers. Or both. Or you lot, for watching it happen, car-crash style. (This is where I'm supposed to insert a smiley to let you know I'm just kidding...)
Update: At quarter to eleven the noise patrol arrived and agreed that it was loud; agreed that we mustn't let the builders take liberties. They offered the view that it might be a pump, which would make sense because there are artesian wells dotted all round the area, a minor tributary of the Effra is said to run under the site, and the last two sets of yuppie flats that went up had terrible problems with sub-ground water. There did used to be a brewery and tannery very near here decades ago. And I wouldn't really know whether the site was properly cleared before it was built on following the demolition of the houses by a V1, or was it a V2, I don't remember.
The noise patrol said I should contact the office tomorrow, so that the daytime officers can visit the site during working hours, but they agreed it was sensible to call them out to vouch for the fact that it's running. Then, as he was leaving, one of them said "Are you a councillor?"
I laughed "I used to be - nearly four years ago now - I'm history, we select the next candidates next week." Prospective candidates I meant, of course. They don't become candidates until the nomination papers are submitted in April.
(I was, of course, Britain's first blogging councillor, but the archives from that period are no longer on this site...)
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