Amazed!!!

January 29, 2024January 29, 2024 Debra Smith1 Comment

Bloganuary writing prompt

What would you do if you won the lottery?

Why amazed? Well, I never play the lottery so winning it is even more improbable than the oft quoted sentence: “The odds show that your more likely to be struck by lightning than you ever are to win the lottery.”

The simple fact is that I’m just not interested in the lottery concept – it’s just boring!

But OK somehow I managed to win a lottery – so let’s put on my imaginary thinking hat. Many have said that they would choose to remain anonymous if possible to avoid all the attention and people asking for a share of your winnings. I agree that I would choose to remain anonymous to the general public. So now I have to think about what would I do with all that money? It’s actually not too hard for me to decide, because I would use a tactic that was used by old lady that I used to know who lived alone and was careful with her money. She decided that rather than die and just leave her money to her grandchildren in her will, she would rather give them her savings now and have them come to see her and tell her how they proposed to use the money – that way she got the pleasure of finding out all the good things that her money was able to provide.

So here is my list:

Put aside a fairly substantial amount for myself e.g. £100,000 – that should be enough to ensure that I could afford the expensive disability equipment that I require/would like (disability equipment is always so much more expensive than people expect). It may even mean that I could sell my house and afford either an already completely accessible and wheelchair friendly home or I could build something that specifically met my needs.
Approach my friends one by one (even those I haven’t seen for ages) and ask them to come and visit me, because I have a proposal for them – that is a very simple solution to the loneliness that I sometimes feel.
All those who do turn up, I would simply ask are there things that they really need and can’t afford. I’d want to know exactly what they were, so that I could reject the merely frivolous stuff.
Then depending upon their need and how much a financial boost would mean to them to achieve whatever they needed – I would give them the money with the sole proviso that they must come and either show me or tell me in some other way how my money has improved their life.
Any money leftover, I would then invest in my “pension pot” to be divided as per my “Last Will and Testament”.

This sounds a little “controlling”, but those that know me wouldn’t be offended because that is how I have always been! It would be nice to say that I would just leave the money to charities, but unfortunately I don’t believe that all charities spend the money they receive to benefit those for whom the charity was setup. So many seem to operate like large companies with large overheads & salaries for their senior staff.

So that’s what I would do with a mythical lottery win. I won’t waste any sleep over it though!

Bloganuary · CHALLENGES · FAMILY · FESTIVALS · HEALTH · HOLIDAYS · HOUSE · Multiple Sclerosis · Nature

Where can you reduce clutter in your life?

January 27, 2024 Debra Smith1 Comment

Let’s start with the “physical” clutter and by that I mean all the medical aids that have been provided and/or bought yet no longer required.

I am fortunate enough to live in a house with large rooms, but that has the disadvantage that the medical professionals with whom I interact and to have (with the best of intentions) provided me with lots of pieces of equipment. Some I use almost every day, but others just sit in a corner with no way to return them easily, as they have no identifiable labels giving details of who it was that provided them.

There are also the eBay purchases that I just can’t get rid of no matter how hard I try – Freecycle, eBay etc.

The motorised wheelchair that is just too small for me and came as an added extra with the electric stair climber that is still in use for my parents house in France where there are both stairs to get into the house and internal stairs.
The manual standing frame that I bought of eBay to try and practice standing, but is hard to operate/quite uncomfortable and since the purchase of my standing wheelchair just before Christmas is simply no longer required.
The lightweight wheelchair that I bought years ago and sits in our shed. At the time it was great, but it doesn’t fold easily and again is simply not required any more.

I could go on, but I think that is quite enough for the physical objects!

To expand the concept there is also the “mental” clutter that is part and parcel of my condition. The sudden depression and uncontrollable crying and feeling useless – but I don’t want to dwell on that as it is self-perpetuating!

Considering my limitations I shouldn’t really complain about my life, because I have been very lucky and still enjoy an awful lot of opportunities that I have. Going to festivals, visiting relatives both in England and France and (although I haven’t done it for a long time) having the opportunity to get out and visit the local Arboretum.

So, let’s just put on a happy face and smile, smile, smile.

HOUSE · PAIN · PETS · WORK

OCTOBER to end NOVEMBER 2019

January 1, 2020 Debra SmithLeave a comment

Somewhere in the middle of my last post (primarily about the Cheltenham Literature Festival), I mentioned that first thing in the morning on Thursday, 10 October, we had our new 2-seater sofa + 2 matching chairs delivered. Charlie has already walked round and under them repeatedly, but will only sit on one of the chairs (well actually an old, folded blanket quickly unloaded from our car!)

So, what else did we do at the end of October? Well immediately after the Festival had finished, we had the carpet fitter in to lay carpet down our stairs and also covering the upper landing (if you look closely at the photo above, you can see that since the stairs were renovated we had still not had them carpeted) and since Charlie loves to chase his tail at the top of the stairs, tumble all way to the bottom and then return to the top to do the whole thing again … We decided that just this area i.e. upper landing & stairs would be carpeted, both for reasons of sound isolation and more importantly (or so Kevin likes to tell) for safety reasons for Charlie.

Unusually, I had to make an emergency appointment at the dentist because my back teeth on the left-hand side were giving me toothache. Not the usual constant, dull pain but every so often a sharp, electric shock, which was only exacerbated by my electric toothbrush. We had to see a different dentist to normal, who assured me that my teeth looked very good although there was some swelling of my gums in the place indicated – so he gave me some antibiotics and all seemed fine for a couple of days – before the whole shenanigans started again. So off we went to the dentist again (this time to see my normal dentist), who confirmed that my teeth & gums looked fine, but he could see some striations indicating that I was ‘grinding my teeth’ – perhaps that was it, but I don’t recall consciously ‘grinding my teeth’ – I’m obviously just becoming a hypochondriac!

At some time during this period, Kevin took up the last remaining carpet upstairs (in our guest bedroom) and fitted yet more bamboo flooring, this time coloured as dark wood to fit in better with the surroundings. I also did lots and lots of webinars to make sure that I fulfilled my professional CPD requirement (including watching a live stream of a discussion about “Brexit Readiness”. Luckily, it won’t affect me too much as most of my work is Patent related, but those relying on trademarks particularly will have a real headache! For me, it will only affect my ability to file EU Registered Designs, but we’ll see …

My monstrosity of a huge power wheelchair (that I haven’t used and is not practical) was serviced during October and at the time, Kevin took the opportunity to explain that it was really not what was required – so at the start of December, wheelchair services came to take it away (hooray), which freed up some space and started Kevin’s general sorting out and getting rid of loads of unwanted items on Gumtree. So, this period has been pretty boring really and more and more depressing as the November announcement of a December General Election approached. I stopped watching the news & ignored much of the vitriol spewed on Twitter and Facebook, it really was pretty hateful and upsetting that supposedly ‘normal’ human beings have the capacity to be so nasty to each other, but that’s for the next post and I will finish this with some more pictures of Charlie luxuriating on his ‘special’, new carpet.

OK – Charlie here … silly servants didn’t post this in time & instead went downstairs to do something called “celebrating the New Year” – it was very noisy and full of bangs, which were a bit frightening! I DO LOVE MY NEW CARPET …

FAMILY · FESTIVALS · FUN · HOLIDAYS · HOUSE

OCTOBER – The Cheltenham Literature Festival

December 28, 2019 Debra SmithLeave a comment

The more observant amongst you will realise that September has ‘disappeared’ despite my last (rather mundane) post – Also, that I am late with this post as it is nearly the end of November (whoops, just turned December) … and now we are approaching the end of 2019! So much for my ‘best intentions’ of keeping a regular blog on-line. I can manage to keep a multiple page spreadsheet daily, but the idea of having anything interesting to write about each day just escapes me.

Well first, looking back on it I can’t really remember much interesting happening in September – yes, we did visit my parents in France and it was pleasant, but I can’t really remember much else about it. The weather must have been quite sunny, because I have lots of photos from Kevin of outdoor plants and butterflies, insects etc. – I think my summary of September will be just a few of the photos.

Plants:

Butterflies:

AT LAST … THE CHELTENHAM LITERATURE FESTIVAL:

And so we started on Friday, 04 October … fairly gently at first with just 3 events covering “Out of the Woods” (how nature can affect mood/mental health) to “Dark Side of the Mind” and ending with a discussion about “Stories of Statelessness” … so gradually easing ourselves into it, because we knew the following day was going to be all out politics – so either really depressing or possibly enlightening! Our day started early (for us) – midday, with the edifying prospect of a discussion entitled “Populism: The Death of Democracy”, which was surprisingly not too ‘heavy’ and much more interesting than at first feared. We then had a more entertaining discussion with James O’Brien and his views and experience of the bizarre twist of events in the previous 12 months. Then we headed to “The Election Generals”, which elicited (as expected) quite a divisive but interesting discussion. Finally, just to ensure that we should try and consider recent events in light of the past, our last event was called “Don’t Look Back in Anger”. I have to admit that having been somewhat concerned by the ‘serious’ nature of our second day, it really wasn’t that bad at all and provided plenty of issues to think about. Because of my fairly pessimistic view of how Saturday was going to turn out, we had deliberately picked a much lighter program for the Sunday, which started with “Who’s Next for the White House” – very enlightening if not a little scary! Then we continued with a discussion called “Life Off-Grid” – lovely idea, but not very practical for me with medical condition + wheelchair. Our day ended with a very pleasant discussion about Tove Jansson (most famous for her Moomin series) with her niece Sophia Jansson about Tove’s life, loves and island refuge.

Now I am honestly having to look back at my on-line calendar for October to remind myself about the various events that we attended, so apart from those that have ‘stuck in my mind’, I think it only fair that I merely relate the number and titles of the events that we attended. On Monday, 07 October, we started off all ‘arty’ with an event entitled “Ways of looking at contemporary art” (I can’t really remember much except that some items I could appreciate the artistic merit and some I just didn’t ‘get’ at all!) Our next event was entitled “Life on the NHS Frontline”, where the panelists were an ex-nurse and an ex-junior doctor both of whom held their own extremely well and really didn’t need any chairperson / facilitator. Now our final event that day was GREAT! It had been placed in far too small a venue, which was packed and everyone enjoyed it – it makes such a difference, when the main speaker is professional and practised – both of which characteristics were true of Dom Joly. The talk was entitled “The Hezbollah Hiking Club”, which obviously was the title of his latest book (now one of the items on my Christmas list from Kevin’s parents). The talk was interesting, funny and the host kept everything moving along smoothly. As I’ve said it was GREAT!

Looking at my on-line calendar, the next day (Tuesday, 08 October) was a really mixed bag and although I remember that everything was really interesting, that’s about it. Our day started with an event entitled “We Need to Talk about Putin”, the next event was entitled “In the shadow of Vesuvius: A Life Of Pliny“, which was fascinating at the time but I can’t really remember any of the important details. And we finished off with an event entitled “Science(ish): Hollywood Wants To Kill You“, which I think (from memory) was understandably weird. On Wednesday (09 October) we only had two events neither of which I can remember in detail, but I am sure that they were both entertaining. Anyway, the titles of the events were “The Knife’s Edge” and “The Art Of Trees“. Thursday, 10 October started with the delivery of our new two seater sofa and matching two chairs in the morning, before we immediately set off for the Literature festival and again the first two items I will just list the titles, because I cannot really remember much detail – “1919–2019: The Irish Century“, “Lucian Freud“. We finished the evening with a highly entertaining discussion with Louis Theroux, which we learnt had SOLD OUT within about the first 3 – 5 minutes of going on sale. As members of the Cheltenham Festivals get a few days head start when booking, this probably meant that the entire audience were members of the Festivals! On Friday, 11 October we saw the following events, which were all good but again I cannot really remember the discussions and so the titles will have to do – “The Best And Worst British Prime Minister?“, “NATO At 70” and “Melanie Reid: The World I Fell Out Of“.

Now as I hope that you can appreciate, we were starting to ‘run out of steam’ and although we had booked for 3 events on the Saturday (12 October) we bowed out of all but the first event– “The Times Debate: Is the Party Over?” with ex-Conservative MP Rory Stewart (now standing as an Independent in the contest for the Mayor of London) and Labour MP Jess Phillips, which ended up as the only event we attended as Kevin was beginning to come down with a cold. The discussion was very civilised and particularly enlightening regarding the resources required to run as an Independent and the restrictions on taking such action and leaving an established political party where you don’t necessarily agree with the leadership, but require the backup of the party structure because of financial responsibilities and the fact that that you feel a better chance of reforming the party from within rather than from the outside. In retrospect, I found this position comforting when facing the reality of “Tactical Voting” in the GE that was announced in November.

So yes, the Cheltenham Literature Festival was a mixture of fun, weird stuff and lots of Politics! As this post has taken so long to compose, I think that I will leave the turmoil of the end of 2019 until my next post – which I will try to do before the New Year!

FAMILY · HEALTH · Multiple Sclerosis · PLUMBERS · WORK

Bellringing coach trip lurgy … TV in bed & hoist / crane

August 25, 2019 Debra SmithLeave a comment

My parents arrived in the UK on 07 March 2019, to meet up with their bellringing friends in Froom prior to commencing a ‘bellringing tour’ (by coach) to Cardiff and its environs. Normally, this would not be worthy of note except that the coach appeared to be the ideal breeding ground for transmission of an infection that by the end of the tour had managed to lay most of the participants out with a cough, cold and general malaise.

At the end of their visit to the UK, as usual, my darling parents had arranged a couple of days stopover with us in Swindon prior to their return via Portsmouth to catch the ferry back to France (14 March 2019). They arrived at our house during the evening of 12 March, both with snuffles and head cold, had a taste of our dinner and immediately took themselves off to bed. So far, all had gone pretty much as normal except that the following morning my mother just about staggered out of bed to fill us in on the brief details of their trip before returning to bed – with profuse apologies – to join my father, who was still sleeping. We spent the next couple of days having occasional visits from my mother and father, but the remainder of the time they spent in bed snoozing / sleeping etc.. Too much time has passed for me to accurately remember how much of their time was split between seeing us and snuggling back in bed, but it was not the normal split (of that I can be sure). Upon their return to France, the lurgy continued to lay them low for weeks – although, it appeared to end with a prolonged period of coughing.

From our perspective, the first to succumb was Kevin, which is rather surprising considering my illness and propensity to pick up bugs that have rather unpleasant consequences. Now for Kevin it was cough, cold and general malaise (just like my parents), but for me a day later it resulted in a complete body shut down & lack of appetite (I ended up living on a very small intake of drinks) and I simply could not sit properly or stand up on my very wobbly legs. I was almost permanently sleepy and ended up spending days confined to bed. Fortunately, Kevin had kept all the bits for the TV stand that I used to use around my assisted exercise bike and so he was able to rig up the TV at the end of our bed so that I could watch it during my waking hours.

When I say “waking hours”, I really mean it – they could occur at any time, day or night – I didn’t really notice the difference, but thank heavens for Amazon Prime, because it meant that I could watch lots of shows at any time.

Looking back through the e-mail communications at the time between Kevin and my parents, I was ‘out of it’ for a lot longer than I realised. Unfortunately, my calendar backs him up on this and so I can’t really argue with his e-mail comment: “And on the sixth day Deb awoke and rose from her slumber …”. I realise that I am extremely fortunate because my default position (even from when I was a very young child) is – feel unwell … fall asleep.

Apparently, the next day “the crane” (otherwise known as a hoist) wasn’t required and the improvement continued from there. My Mum and Dad apologised profusely for unleashing ‘the lurgy’ on us both, but it seemed to linger longer with them than it did for either of us. As I commented in an e-mail to my mother on 23 March: “I am over worse of the bug and managing to catch up with some of my work, but I still have the occasional coughing fits. Fortunately, as I spend most of my time sitting at my desk, I don’t really notice the “lack of energy”. For the last few days, I have even been able to cycle ‘actively’ for over 60 minutes on the exercise bike, whilst watching TV.” So, my ill spell was sandwiched between two sessions of work. On 11 March, before my parents visit – I had an e-mail exchange with a potential inventor (unfortunately, this came to naught) and as soon as I was able to get back in my office to my computer I was able to catch up with all my work management tasks i.e. finance, IP management database etc. – one of the benefits of working for your own company, from home.

23 March 2019 – the plumbers are back to fit the ‘replacement’, reduced depth sink, although the drainage is not quite working when the sink is at different heights. The plumber came back from lunch with some more bits, which will hopefully rectify things. Hooray, it worked! We now have a sink arrangement that is much more discreet (i.e. doesn’t stick out into the toilet area) and functions perfectly at all various heights.

PLUMBERS

New bathroom – Kevin + Plumbers for the “Final Final Fix” … (Version 2)

August 20, 2019August 20, 2019 Debra SmithLeave a comment

Now this will just be a very quick post giving an update on the rebuilding of the sink wall and replacement of the sink to a smaller, less intrusive sink.

At first, Kevin decided that his job for the weekend was to make good and paint the ceiling and replace all the lights with proper IP65 sealed LED units that are safe and legal to use in the shower.

OK, so once the lighting etc. had been finished, Kevin was in the mood for some ‘demolition DIY’ himself and so he spent the next couple of days carefully removing the tiles in the sink area (saving as many as possible), deconstructing the high shelf and rebuilding everything to form a much lower shelf.

Version 2: The wall behind the sink has been taken down and rebuilt so that it is ready to call the tilers in for a second time to re-tile the modified wall. Once the tiling is redone, the height adjustment mechanism and sink need to be remounted on the ‘new’ wall.

Kevin had identified a replacement for the Pressalit sink – the Roper Rhodes Breathe 610. The basic requirements being a shallow front edge suitable for a wheelchair, wall-mounted, roughly 600mm wide and ideally about 400mm deep (the Breathe 610 is 430 deep, which is 60mm shallower than the Pressalit).

We were nearing completion (at last) … just a couple of final small jobs were required from the plumbers.

Replacing the heater element for the towel rail in the bathroom (it blew the moment Matt wired it up).
Better securing the Geberit toilet to the wall/floor.

The plumbers had sourced a new flexible waste that is connected at both ends & Matt had a 600W element ready to change.

05 March 2019 – FINISHED …

PLUMBERS

New bathroom – Plumbers for the “Final Fix” … (Version 1)

August 19, 2019 Debra SmithLeave a comment

We’ve had two plumbers in all day (14 February 2019). Unfortunately, this job has taken sooo long that Steve, the guy doing almost all the work, is now off on holiday fishing in Cape Verde. This is a nuisance for us, as he’d familiarised himself with all the specialist bits of kit being installed, plus he knew where he’d put the noggins in to support the sink (thankfully he’d scrawled dimensions on the wall in pencil, though it took some time to interpret them). It meant that the guys spent the first two hours this morning just trying to understand the monstrous height adjustable sink mechanism.

At the end of the day:

the sink is hung on the wall, but not plumbed in;
the shower is fully installed and working. If you want to make a plumber purr, buy a Grohe shower – they’ve all been very keen on the shower, the one we originally bought for our previous house in Goddard Ave.

the shower drain is installed, tested, and works well. The plumbers seemed almost surprised how effective the fall was in the shower former in directing water towards the drain.
dual fuel towel rail hung and partially installed. Rather glad Kevin went for the very tall/very narrow radiator – it was a guess at the time, but having seen it we agree that it fits the space better than the shorter/wider version originally proposed.

Of course nothing goes perfectly, and we’ve got a couple of problems:

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

The main problem being that the height adjustable sink sticks miles out into the room. We forgot to take account of the depth of the bracket mechanism, which is huge, plus didn’t know that we’d have to reinforce and box out the wall behind the sink. Combined result is that the sink sits out much further out into the room than we’d expected – right in the space where Kevin would normally stand to transfer me (Debra) onto the toilet. We’ll see how much play there is in moving the toilet across a little, but otherwise there’s nothing we can do about this right now, we’ll just have to try it and see if we can live with it.

I (Debra) am very happy with how things are looking, but Kevin is more concerned – the sink, and how far it sticks out into the room, is annoying. The super duper height adjustable bracket is far fancier than the one Kevin originally specced. However, we’re looking at solutions here, particularly keeping the bracket (which I like), but seeing whether it can be used with a different and less deep sink. The plastic back to the toilet/cistern cover is also concerning Kevin – He is not sure how well it will survive those occasions where he drops me (Debra) onto the loo. So we’re looking at toilet back rests to solve this.

Still some things to do – the towel rails/radiators in both the bathroom and our en-suite are plumbed in as radiators, but not yet connected up as electric towel rails, although all the wiring is in situ. The care screen is missing – we returned the one originally ordered to be replaced by a custom order in a different size, but that won’t be available till next week. Looks like there’s a minor leak in the drain for the sink, which is not surprising, as both the plumbers who’ve looked at the flexible drain have cursed it, as it appears to be a non-standard size.

Finally, a tale of two contrasts: On the left, the remote pneumatic switch for the body dryer – a simple rubber squeezer that sends a puff of air down a flexible tube to an air pressure sensor on the body dryer to turn it on and off – so no electric switches in the shower. On the right, the fancy two-way remote for programming and controlling the toilet.

Left – shower control button & Right – toilet control remote

We came back from the gym on Friday to hear the two plumbers giggling like little girls as they played with the loo, trying to work out whether everything was connected correctly and working. Kevin is most upset that he can’t get the “fart extractor”(Kevin’s description) to come on automatically when you sit down (I’m not kidding you – that’s the button with the fan/flower and wafting breeze). I think that the manufacturer’s describe it as an “odour removal system” or something equally genteel. Hopefully once setup we can tuck the main remote away in it’s holder in the loo and just use its *second* controller, which is a simple infra-red proximity switch that you stick somewhere convenient, then run your hand or foot past it to automatically trigger the toilet to flush and then do a wash and blow dry cycle. (It sounds more like a hairdressing accessory than a toilet!)

FUN · PLUMBERS

… Back to the ‘new’ bathroom … Next the tiling gets done …

August 16, 2019August 16, 2019 Debra SmithLeave a comment

First fit finished by the plumbers, tilers due tomorrow (Tuesday, 05 February 2019) at about 7.15 a.m., because apparently they prefer to get started early so that they can leave early too. Apparently, they have been known to arrive to jobs at 6.45 a.m., but helpfully, our plumbers had warned them not to arrive until after 7 a.m. so that Kevin had a chance to get up before their arrival and that then I (Debra) may still have to disturb them to pass across the corridor from our bedroom to my office.

Floor in and raised – a millimetre or two lower than Kevin would have liked, but have to work with the thicknesses of the boards available (plus when we had the landing levelled the carpenter deliberately inserted a separate removable strip by the doorway precisely so we could adjust for any slight differences in the level of the bathroom and landing).

So the tilers arrived to schedule and rang the doorbell at 7.15 a.m. to be let in by Kevin (apparently they had arrived before 7 a.m., but as instructed they had sat in their van outside, listening to music). In fact, the radio remained on all of the time that they were working. As expected, they left early having completed most of to walls and promising to return to finish the rest at about the same time the next day.

Window including waste outlet for toilet

Next we come to the non-slip safety flooring, which led to a problem with the contractor chosen to fit the specialist safety flooring. Kevin’s thoughts / discussion with the plumbers on how to resolve the problems with the AKW wetroom former and drain cover – as AKW had been no help whatsoever!

Kevin – The best options are either to improvise and work with the bits we’ve already got – if Step Floors are happy with that – or to replace the former. The gulley cover AKW supplied comes in three parts – a frame that bolts down into the former and is meant to go under tiles, a surround that is meant to be cemented on top, and a drop in drain cover. Obviously the surround is useless with a safety floor, but I wonder whether we can use the supplied frame, still bolted into the former, but on top of the vinyl floor to clamp it down. Step Floors weren’t happy with this idea initially, because the frame is cut away in the extreme corners, meaning the vinyl would only be clamped along the sides, with a gap for water to leak through in the corners. However, what is the issue here – if it leaks in the corners the water is only going to go into the gully anyway, which is the whole point of a drain! I guess the issue is whether the water could get back up under the vinyl in the corners. We’d also need to file off the edges on the frame as they are square, sharp and not meant to be exposed, but that’s a minor issue. I guess it all comes down to whether Step Floors are happy with this.

Plumber – That was my thought too. How can we make the existing tray work? I had already phoned step floors and requested their fitter to call me to see want he would be happy to lay on that works for all parties.

Current plan – both us and the plumbers, so we’re both on the same wavelength – is to collectively beat up on the flooring contractors and tell them to stop being wusses and improvise with the bits we’ve got.

Arranged on Tuesday, 12 February that the floor would be done Wednesday (13 February) afternoon. Instead, we got a call very early Wednesday morning asking if they could come in first thing to do some prep work. Supposed to be just 30 minutes – instead took 2 hours to lay a very fine screed to cover up all the screws in the floor. Impressed that the guy could trowel on such a wafer thin layer of cement. Main floorers followed shortly after to radius the corners, lay the floor and weld the joints. All done in about 4 hours. Looks good!

FUN · PLUMBERS

Some random ‘things’ that have also been going on …

August 14, 2019August 15, 2019 Debra SmithLeave a comment

Prospect Place Conservation Area Trust – Meeting (Wednesday, 23 January 2019)

Unfortunately, I (Debra) could not attend this meeting because it was in a local church, which was not accessible for my wheelchair. However, from Kevin’s report it sounded like an interesting meeting with some ‘wacky’ ideas, which will probably come to nothing but sounded fun anyway. Here’s a quick rundown:

How do people know that the “Prospect Place Conservation Area” even exists?

We’ve had a lot of builders in recently as we adapt our house for Debra’s wheelchair, and when they found us the reaction is – almost universally – “wow, I didn’t know any of this existed”.

What can we do to signpost the area, both for locals, visitors and those just passing through, to indicate that “hey, this is somewhere special – treat it as such” ?

It was mentioned that Lansdown Road (opposite us) has a 20 mph limit, but what has always struck me about that is not the limit itself, but the signage. The signs don’t just show the speed limit but are also marked with the name of the zone (“Lansdown”, not “Lansdown Rd”, as if this is an area or zone in its own right). Regardless of whether a 20 mph speed limit can be obtained (or is even necessary), I wonder whether signs could also show and demarcate the boundaries of the conservation area, advertising its existence to anyone passing through.

Looking further forward, beyond just signposting the area, I wonder if information boards explaining a bit more about the area might be a worthwhile subject for a grant request ? If permission were granted, the eastern end of stone wall marking the old Affleck works (by the double yellow lines – just opposite our house) seems like a reasonable candidate location for such information, particularly – as Kevin learned last night, that it marks one of the entries into the conservation area.
Moving onto online awareness, you mentioned that you were looking at setting up a web site for the CAT. But a web site needs a decent domain name … a quick check says that prospect-place.org.uk is available (as are a wide variety of similar domains). I’m (Kevin) more than happy to assist if you need any help here in registering the domain name you choose. Once you’ve got a domain name, you need some services to back it up. Both Google and Microsoft Office 365 have free offerings for charities, but Google’s is more extensive, and as you are already using gmail for the current CAT email, it would also be familiar. Google For Non-Profits offer the full Google suite (so Gmail, Calendar, Drive and so on, but all branded with your own domain name, rather than just gmail.com) including Google Sites, which offers an easy way to get a rudimentary web site up quickly as a starter. Google Maps would be an easy and obvious way to present information about the area. Google also offer more esoteric services for non-profits, including free Google AdWords advertising (complete with click-thru revenue if anyone actually clicks on the advert, although that would be negligible). Again, I’m (Kevin) happy to offer assistance here if needed.
That leaves social media – It would be nice if any Facebook Groups could be gatewayed to somewhere external to Facebook for those who don’t use Facebook, but Facebook don’t exactly make that easy.
We (Debra & Kevin) loved Stuart’s suggestion of bringing back the original name of “New Providence Row” for the eastern end of South Street – it would certainly make our postal address sound more impressive ! However I suspect it’s also impractical and possibly disruptive as changes to the PAF (the official postal database) propagate out to all its different users.

Not your average toilet …

Oh, just look at all those wires and bits:

Not going on the wall yet – I think that’s for the final fix – but out so we can agree what height to set it at, and so the plumber can get the waste, pipes and electrics in the right place. I “love” the fact that the toilet controller appears to have a diagnostics port, so you can plug a laptop into your loo to see what’s going on !

Also pleased to see it comes with the clear plastic splash plate Geberit use when demonstrating the loo – that means we can test and run cleaning solution through the spray bar without jetwashing the ceiling.

PLUMBERS

The bathroom – So now the rebuilding work can start …

August 5, 2019August 9, 2019 Debra SmithLeave a comment

WEEK 2, (28 Jan 2019) first day’s work – building a new wall over the previous approximation of a wall, squaring everything up so the wet-room former fits flush. We’ve also got the partition in place for the shower. The wall has had to be built out into the room as the structural beam from below protrudes up above floor level in the bathroom – previously this was hidden under the bath and shower tray, but this won’t work with a one piece sealed floor:

Green moisture resistant plasterboard waiting to form the NEW walls

As this might be the last update for a while (as will become apparent at the end of this post), and as today has further continued our adventures in Bongo-bodge land, then here goes …

Two plumbers here most of today (three at one point). The plan was to plasterboard out the walls and level the floor up with plywood. Well parts of that went to plan – we’ve now got several walls boarded out in fetching/retching green moisture resistant plasterboard.

… but then there’s the wall behind the old sink …

The plan was to remove the original plasterboard from that wall and add a reinforcing panel to support the cantilevered sink. However taken the skin off revealed two more entries in our Bodging Hall of Shame:

1) The “insulation” inside the wall consisted of green carpet tiles and what looks like old pillow or cushions – novel !

2) The wall itself was floating and not actually attached to anything at the base – you could move the wall with a gentle push. Rather than sitting on top of the wall and lintel between the living room and the kitchen downstairs, it actually sat directly on the joists in the living room without being attached to them. The wall was being held in place by the sink unit and work surface, rather than vice versa. As our plumber described it, this was just “total dogshit”.

So they’ve had to box out this wall as well, at least the lower section. This isn’t too bad in that it hides the pipework and provides a useful ledge in the alcove where the sink is going, but it does mean the bathroom continues to shrink as the new walls move inwards to hold up the old ones …

Boxed out area for the new sink – So the wall supports the sink & not vice versa

And then it started to snow. So far we’ve only had the the lightest of dusting, but if it does snow more overnight as forecast then I doubt we’ll see our plumber tomorrow given he lives up in Wanborough. Fortunately perhaps he’s got a bit more time to get the first fix finished, as the tiling contractors, who were originally scheduled to come in yesterday, and were then moved to Thursday because the plumber wasn’t ready for them, have now postponed this job till next week, as they’re running late on another job.