Seven

-
Wednesday:  An additional entry that definitely comes under the heading of 'you couldn't make it up...'

Midway through the day there's bad news – we hear that the Royal Mail post are planning two 48 hour strikes – one set for 5th/6th October, the other for 8th/9th October which, with the Sunday inbetween, means FIVE days without post at the end of next week – just when we’re expecting to hear about planning.  BUGGER.  Karen in my office reckons they’re reading BrideShedRevisited and planning their action to cause maximum disruption…

Still, on the bright side, our 21 days of having the second ‘Notice of Planning’ are finally, finally up.  It has been quite the longest 21 days we’ve ever known… it means when I get home from work I can take down the notices and just wait for the post.  I get in to find a letter from the Council on the mat.  Planning?  Already?  WOO HOO!  Nope.  It’s a letter saying ‘it has not been possible to determine the application within the 8 week period determined by …. blah blah blah ... grateful if you would agree to an extension of the period of determination until 8th November 2007’.    WHAT?  That’s another SEVEN weeks away!  What are they doing?  Knitting the response?  I am gobsmacked.  Utterly gobsmacked.  We originally applied on 16th April 2007.  If we wait till 8th November that will be a stunning 29 weeks and 3 days.  More than half a bloody year.  IT’S A SHED!  I genuinely can’t believe it.

I get the tumblers ready...

Guy walks down with Blunkett and wants to hear about my meeting with the police inspector (WAG stuff, he was frosty to start with, I was persuasive, he thawed nicely and now we’re best friends and he’ll do all he can to help, lovely chap) but I tell him he’ll need a gin as I have Planning News.  He is astounded to hear they want another extension and also can’t imagine what they’re doing all this time.  We sit in a stunned silence.  And drink gin.  Can’t really do a lot else.  I wish the persuasion that worked so nicely on the police inspector worked as well on planners.

We agree I will ring tomorrow morning (not at 9.05am as we don’t want to look desperate) and try to find out what the hell is going on…. Or not going on.

Guy goes home in the dark (the nights are drawing in, we will have NO evenings at all by the time we get a shed…) and I do what I always do when I’m upset or angry.  Get drunk?  Nope.  Eat a whole tub of ice cream?  Nope.  Go for a run?  Nope.  I clean the oven…

We should probably scrap the numbers at the top of this – at this rate we’ll be at ninehundredandseventyfour before planning comes through…

And I never did take that wretched planning notice down...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Eighteen

-
Image
After the midweek excitement (yep, there was a midweek entry this week) I decide to take things easy on Thursday.  So I take the lights down, swim, clean the car, feed the birds, redecorate the squirrel feeder and photograph the cakes.  Then I have breakfast and go to work…  Rob is coming back on Sunday to take down the shuttering and make a start on the retaining wall. Friday is a completely unsheddy day – we have a fantastic night out with Gareth and Nic where we have a tournament of Wii games at their newly extended house.  Actually, it’s not a completely unsheddy day as we admire the colour of their sitting room and think it would be an excellent colour for a shed… On Saturday morning, after our late night, we sit in bed with a cup of tea and ponder our day… we could sweep leaves, we could do more to the path edge, we could do cakes… we’re just at the ‘stretching out of the toes and taking it easy’ stage when a car turns up.  It’s Rob.  SHIT!...
Read more

Thirty One

-
Image
The beginning of the week is very dull, shedwise.  We’re really stuck until Derek the Dab can come and put up the plasterboard.  We decorate a fruit cake and take delivery of the pale green woodwash for the stud wall – nice colour!  We paint little samples of our ‘cookie dough’ and ‘ivory’ onto postcards and try them all together.  Lovely.  Paint sorted. On Wednesday Derek phones to say that he can start doing the boards and have I got them yet.  I haven’t.  He says that B&Q are doing boards for £4.95 so he’ll get them from there unless Travis Perkins (where I now proudly have a trade card) can do them cheaper.  I phone TP and, after a bit of haggling, I get them down to £4.94.  Well, every penny and all that… There is then what can only be described as a teensy breakdown in communications.  Having said to Derek that TP won’t be able to deliver and he’ll have to pick them up and I’ll let him know where, I presume that my text sa...
Read more

Sixteen

-
Image
On Monday morning as I drive to work I see more bricks slung on the heap of rubbish outside the house that had useless bricks before… I investigate at lunchtime and meet the lovely builders who say I can have as many as I like, and they even help me load the car.  With three of us loading there are a lot of bricks in it.  Probably rather too many… the car is parked on a slope and when I’ve said my goodbyes and removed the handbrake it simply doesn’t move… Eventually the wheels start to go round and when I get home and unload the booty I find it’s a grand total of 67 bricks!  The good news is that I now know that that’s limits, weightwise, for a little Smart… bless it.  The boys have said that they’ll be taking a wall down in a few weeks and they’ll pile the bricks up for me where I can see them.  Seems churlish to refuse… On Tuesday they’ve done it sooner than expected and made a pile of bricks, so I load up on my way home – the pile is enormous so I ca...
Read more