Feeling Older - Postscript

I wrote earlier this year (see here) about feeling older.  I now have a couple of postscripts to that entry.

Firstly, I have now used my senior's bus pass for the first time; mind you, I did forget the conditions and boarded a bus at 8.57am, only to be told that I could not use it before 9.00 am. I was tempted to try to beat him to the next stop, but then decided to wait for the next one.

Secondly, I recently had my hair cut in a different hairdresser's as my usual one had a queue.  I had a nice chat with the young woman and, when she finished, she charged me just £5.20. I thought this was cheap as the usual one costs £11, so I gave her a decent tip; then on my way out I checked their prices - she had charged me the "seniors rate" without me asking! Not good for my self-esteem, but I'll go back there.

Thinking of haircuts, when I had just moved to London a few years ago, I tried several places for a decent haircut.  At one unisex place, the young woman did a very nice cut and trimmed the hair in my ears (nasty sign of ageing) with the clippers.  Then, to remove the loose hair, she BLEW in my left ear!!  I think she realised that this was not the done thing (even though I was too surprised to comment!) as she didn't do the same on the other side.  I didn't go back there - I found a proper men's barber (just a few yards from Bermondsey Tube Station, if you're interested).

The Shed I've Always Wanted Part 1

I've been building a shed! Not just an ordinary shed, but a shed that looks good, will be useful and should outlast me. 

I already have one shed which I bought in 2011; it arrived on the back of a small truck and I was able to assemble it myself.  It only measures 7' x 5', which is a bit small for anything other than storage.  In fact, it is so small and crowded that I can hardly get inside it.  Frankly, it's a bit cheap and cheerful, and the roof is already sagging, so when I have finished Shed #2, everything will be moved from #1 so that I can repair that one.  My intention is that it will remain a storage shed, whilst #2 will be the place where I can do things in a decent amount of space; it will also store a few things like our camping kit which is currently kept in a large metal cupboard in the garden. The cupboard needs to go, as it is kept partly dry by an ugly old green tarpaulin.

The new shed is, I admit, a bit over-engineered (I am a chartered engineer after all!). It is basically designed as though someone was going to live in it (which I am NOT going to do).  I designed my shed in my head; the only drawings were a couple of sketches when I was ordering materials, just to make sure that I didn't forget something.  I also used Excel to get the dimensions of the sloping roof etc - even I cannot do hyperbolic functions mentally! The structure is tanalized C16 4 x 2, with an insulated floor supported on 9 brick piers, plus a slate roof (because it looks right).

The house shed measures only 10' x 6', but I feel that this is as large as the available space allows.  The only space large enough is on the raised ground beside the house, just inside the back gate, so it looks larger than it actually is.  I felt that 8' x 6' was a bit small but didn't want a huge shed, so 10' x 6' was a good compromise.  This gives 60 sq ft and I worked out that two sheets of 8' x 4' plywood were 64 sq ft, so a careful bit of cutting gave me four pieces for the floor and a 2' x 2' bit left over.  The long side is the side visible from our kitchen so I wanted the ridge of the roof to go across the short length, so that a gable end is seen. The visible long side has a window (see later) and the door.

Firstly I had to make the nine brick piers to support three beams.  The holes were dug and 4" of concrete inserted, then recycled bricks were set and built up - levelling was fun but a 5ft spirit level helped.

Then I had to make sure that my joists were going to support the edges of the bits of floor plywood, so the floor has ten joists (including two edges, plus the other two edges at right angles) which are separated by a slightly irregular gap of about 10 inches.  I used one inch structural grade plywood for the floor which is probably over-designed but I did not want to risk a sagging or bouncing floor. The floor also has 75mm Kingspan (= Celotex) insulation between the joists as I didn't want it to get cold (although I haven't yet decided whether to insulate the walls; they can wait).  Then there is a bit of thin OSB ("oriented strand board") on the other side to seal it in - I made the frame first and put the OSB on top (so it was now rigid) and then turned it over, did the insulation and then fitted the plywood floor.  As well as getting the edges supported by joists, I also fitted some half inch plank where the cuts in the floor were at right angles to the joists, so that those edges are nice and rigid as well.  Oh yes, I should mention that everything was screwed not nailed - I did try to hire a nail gun but no-one seemed to have one available.  Some photos:

Having done the floor, I used it as the platform to assemble the frames for the walls: two identical rectangles for the short ends, and one larger rectangle for the long back wall.  The two ends were erected and held in place by temporary supports, then I put up the back frame and screwed it all together, with a temporary joist at head height across the front to hold the sides in place.  The roof was next - I cut both ends of ten 5x2 rafters plus a bird's mouth, and a board to fit as the ridge, with five rafters each side.  The question was  - how to erect this on my own? My solution was to screw rafters #2 and #4 to one side of the board, and rafter #3 to the other side, then lift it all up, placing the bird's mouth cuts on the top of the two end frames, and then screwing them down (having previously marked the positions). I could then screw on the other halves of rafters #2, #3 and #4, and fit a horizontal member to each pair of rafters to complete each truss.  Finally, I could fit the 5th truss at the back, then remove the temporary joist at the front to fit the front truss.

The front wall had not been built as the height of the door was higher than the temporary joist that I had fitted, due to my desire to keep the overall height down.  This could now be done and I incorporated a space for the window.  The I finished off the top of the back wall, where I put in another window.  More photos:

The two windows were recycled from an old bathroom window (from the old extension - see here) which had large lower window and an opening narrow top window; I fitted a temporary plank across the top window, cut the frame at the bottom of the top window and made a new frame for the bottom of it, thus giving me two useable windows - the larger for the front and the other for the back. Sometime I will replace the glass, but it's not a high priority!

To be continued...

Feeling Older

I've just experienced another of those shocking things that happen as you get older: I found out that I was entitled to a Concessionary Bus Pass! It was bad enough last year when I found I could have had a Senior Railcard for a year or so, but the Bus Pass as well - what next?

Of course, I now have both these documents, as they save me money. I remember my mother was still paying full price for things like entrance tickets (she never travelled by train or bus!!) when she was 75 or 80 as she didn't want to accept that she was over 60! The Senior Railcard does cost money, but if you are likely to travel by train a couple of times a year, it would pay for itself very quickly as you get 30% off.  I paid for the three year one (£70) and that has already paid for itself in less than a year; I was slightly disappointed last year when I got it as I could have saved money on my earlier visits to my brother's hospital had I known. The Bus Pass has yet to be used, but free local bus travel anywhere in the UK really sounds like something that I will use. It irritated me only a week ago to be charged £1.80 on my OysterCard for a short bus journey in London. 

Talking of my OysterCard, another little way of saving money is to get your Senior (or any other sort of concession) Railcard linked to your OysterCard, so that you get the 30% discount there as well. They don't always tell you these things clearly and so you do have to look after yourself.  It's rather like booking ahead on the trains - if you travel off peak and are happy to get a specific return train as well as outward, you can book on-line and save a lot there as well. 

I have to say that I am feeling a bit older since my operation - I don't have quite the same energy levels, and am happy to sit doing nothing sometimes. If I mention this to t'other half, she says "welcome to the real world!"

Plans for the Year

A belated happy New Year to you all! I've just about got over my operation and my brother is doing very well with his new kidney. The convalescence has been a good excuse for a couple of months but now I've got to focus on the house again.  Even so, I've not posted here for a few weeks as there was really nothing to say; the weather has generally been so bad that I have been avoiding the idea of going out in the garden - it's just cold, wet and muddy.

However, I know from past experience that to make progress on a large job like a house, you have to "eat an elephant" - i.e. do a little bit at a time, but just keep on doing it. So I need a plan and a set of targets; I'm hoping that by writing them down here they will cause me to actually do them, whereas a written list at home is easily lost (and I do lose things easily anyway!).  Also, a written list can be a bit depressing (especially if you put in too much detail) as it just looks insurmountable and has the opposite effect to what is intended.

So, here's my realistic list for what I want to do on this house and garden this year:

a.  Finish the small brick wall and the barbecue stand at the back of the garden
b.  Get some more limestone and finish the wall down the side of the house/lawn
c.  Get some more limestone and do the other end of that wall, where I want to make a ramp up to the lawn with a retaining wallin front of the shed.
d.  Finish decorating indoors (includes lime plaster repairs)
e.  Plaster the walls of the wardrobe
f.   Fit the bath panel properly
g.  Refurbish at least one of the sash windows
h.  Construct an 8' x 12' shed in the side garden
i.   Construct a store (for camping equipment and rarely used tools etc) round the back
j.   Repaint various bits outside where the black paint is peeling off (why?)

Now, I've been pretty brief on the detail and left out completely a lot of small jobs but even so it slightly depresses me.  However, the next stage is to decide the priorities and hence what to do in each month (trying to pretend that the weather will be great). I've also omitted a promise to my oldest brother to go and help him do a job on his equally old house for a few days.

The main priority is the shed as that will give me a home for all my tools and also allow me to do dirty jobs (like sanding a door) when it's wet. In fact the first job then is to do the retaining wall as the lawn and shed are higher than the ground around the house.  Of course, the shed is an outside job so all I can do on that right now is to plan and wait for some decent weather. So the next jobs to be tackled are the internal ones like the re-decorating - somehow I find I have difficulty in mustering any enthusiasm for that but I know that once I start it won't seem so bad.

All this makes me realise just how much work I got done in Nov 2010 - June 2011, how well I did the project management and how committed I must have been then: I think I worked 9 or 10 hour days, six days out of seven in most weeks, initially in very cold weather (remember that snow?) and then it brightened up in the Spring. Looking back I am impressed with my own performance but I doubt that I could do it again.

Wind and Rain - Wet or Dry?

I wrote recently about how this house is now warm and dry (see this post), and the recent weather has reinforced that view.  The wind and rain have been causing issues both to the Grade I listed church opposite, and to the 12 year old house of a friend who had water ingress affecting her electrics and security alarm. In both cases I went to investigate and the cause was the same - the driving wind from the south-west forcing water into cracks in the wall and gaps along flashing.

On the church there were small leaks at various places along the south arches where the nave meets the south aisle. As a result I had to go on the south aisle roof (on Christmas Eve!) to investigate and found that the flashing was pointed with cement which had come away from the limestone above, leaving a 2-3mm gap.  Since it was cement already I overcame my inbuilt resistance and used some fairly wet cement mortar to fill in this gap; however, it is a good illustration of why you shouldn't use cement on a limestone building - the cement is rigid and so will crack when the lead expands in the heat, whereas lime mortar is much more tolerant. At some time we will get all this cement out and have the job done properly with lime, but of course I couldn't do such a repair in this cold and wet weather.

The friend's house was perhaps more surprising: the water ingress was where the low front porch joined the front wall of the 2-storey house and at a quick glance from the ground it all looked OK. However, closer investigation using a ladder revealed cracks in the pointing of the front wall of the house, and some very poor pointing using mastic on the lead flashing at the join. In fact, there was what looked like the proper exterior mastic but also some clear mastic which really looked like internal stuff which someone had applied when a similar event had occurred before our friend bought it; of course, the newer stuff was no longer stuck to the older stuff so my recommendation was to get someone to sort the mastic properly and, perhaps, fill the pointing cracks at the same time. Of course, I am still officially convalescing so I didn't want to volunteer myself, even though I do have the necessary tools.

On the plus side, our own house has stoutly resisted the weather and has only ever had water ingress at one point - a southerly wind can force rain onto and under the front door despite a decent weatherboard and some cunning work by me on the doorstep. We use a bit of newspaper to mop it up and otherwise ignore it! As I look out now on New Year's Eve and see the rain still falling, at least I can feel content with this house being warm and dry - now I must go and check the church...

Doesn't Time Fly?

Yesterday was my grandson's third birthday; he was born the day after all that snow fell in Dec 2010.  I can remember so clearly that I was busy the whole day doing the laths on the back bedroom ceilings  - it was freezing cold in the house - while the snow fell and fell until it was 8 or 10 inches deep. I wrote this entry a few days later, but here's another photo from that time:

That one was taken in the back garden of the dreadfully cold and badly designed rented house that we had at the time. That house (built in 1999) just never got warm, even in July, and a modern house surely should not allow the internal hot water pipes to freeze between the boiler and the bathroom! This house of ours, however, did warm up when the walls had dried out after all the sources of dampness had been tackled; the old thick walls are now a heat reservoir which helps the house to be warmer than outside in winter and cooler than outside in summer. Old methods are more effective than badly done new ones!

Anyway, back to my grandson. I did not realise how much fun a grandchild would be, especially now that he has reached the stage of learning things and asking questions. Every time we see him he comes out with some new bit of learning, like switching on the room lights. Of course, I am fairly pleased that he wasn't our own child when we heard about him being unwell last weekend! However, he was better yesterday and really enjoying opening his presents, blowing candles out and eating chocolate cake. Oh to be young again.

Don't You Just Love Amazon?

Apologies for the off topic post!

I no longer buy things from Amazon; I have never bought much but over time I have come to really dislike everything that they stand for – basically maximising profit regardless of the effect on individuals, companies or countries.

The booksellers’ started it. They are the ones who not only let the embryo Amazon get a foot in the door, but they didn’t realize that this was the thin end of the wedge which was actually very thick. They must have thought that having a contract with a small new on-line company would just help them sell more books, and didn’t seem to appreciate either the potential scale of Amazon’s ambitions or the effect of the contracts that they signed. It obviously never occurred to them that Amazon would be able to use the generous discount which the retailers gave to undercut them to the extent that Amazon would then achieve a huge market share. This then allowed Amazon to control the market to the extent that the retailers would then not be able to do without Amazon! Very clever stuff from Amazon, and you have to hand it to them that as a business plan it succeeded fantastically well.

From selling books successfully, someone at Amazon realized that the same infrastructure could be used to sell anything non-perishable. (In fact, of course, they try to pretend that you actually can buy absolutely anything; you must have noticed that silly thing that appears on a Google search for, say, “Barack Obama” which says “Buy Barack Obama at Amazon”?) That decision, plus a good amount of investment, has made Amazon into the leading on-line retailer and a real force to be reckoned with. As the holder of an MBA, I cannot help but admire their success; I bet that there are now case studies which teach these new ethics to the current MBA students all across then country.

However, there are several separate reasons for my aversion: firstly, their business model seems intent on driving everyone else out of business. They started with bookshops and are now aiming at many other high street shops. Such market dominance has probably often been the aim of many companies, but I doubt that many, if any, have succeeded to the same extent. Frankly you have to wonder where it will end – do they want to control the whole world? Shades of the Inner Party in Oceania out of Orwell’s “1984”?

Secondly, as is well known, Amazon doesn’t pay much (if any) UK corporation tax. They do this legally as it is the avoidance of tax by legal means as opposed to illegally evading tax, and I'm amazed that this is still possible as international conglomerates have been around for ages.  However, I really hope that before long there will be some provision for forcing Amazon and other companies such as Starbucks and Google to pay tax on profit earned as a result of UK operations. The only benefit that this country derives from such companies is that they provide employment for people in this country, but that brings me on to my third point:

The employment practices of Amazon are nothing better than third-world sweat-shop exploitation. The recent Panorama programme (see this link to the BBC iPlayer) reveals the methods behind their efficient and prompt despatch of your item ordered so easily on your PC. In it, the undercover reporter reveals how he spent every shift picking your orders from the shelves in a vast warehouse, with a computer telling him how many seconds he has for each one before he is judged to be going too slowly.  The pressure is relentless and experts are produced to pronounce how harmful this is to one’s health. Is this really the type of employment that this country deserves?

 I cannot now bring myself to order anything at all from Amazon.

Warm and Dry, or Damp and Cold?

I'm still officially convalescing but I feel a bit of a fraud, as I am actually healing very well and I feel very well. I'm very limited in what I am allowed to do around the house: I'm not allowed to lift things, or go up ladders, or do anything that really classes as "work".  However, I am being obedient and not risking anything, probably until Christmas. The only thing that I don't like to do too much is bending down, as that puts pressure on the wound across my abdomen; this doesn't hurt at all but it just feels like a bad idea!

I went outside the back of the house today for the first time in ages, where it really is cold and damp. I was surprised to see that my new grey limestone slabs all have a green tinge. I presume that this discoloration will last until next Spring, when I would hope that the slabs will dry out as the temperature rises and, like the walls of the house, the green will just disappear.  There is no way that I want to take a pressure hose to these slabs every year!

The conditions outside were a forceful reminder about the way to treat an old building; we are dry and quite warm inside, and this was achieved by using no cement, no damp proof course and no modern plaster in the restoration of the house (although of course the extension was built entirely in the modern way). I've only lit the front room fire once, and the woodburner not at all, as I am still waiting for it to turn cold! After all, I don't want to waste firewood. The secondary glazing helps enormously, and keeping draughts down by closing internal doors helps as well although of course the paradox is that good ventilation is essential. The first rule is that if you are not wearing a jumper then you can't complain about the cold inside the house, and the second rule is that if you turn the thermostat up then you can't complain about the size of the gas bill!

The Best Thing I've Ever Done

Well, the afore-mentioned kidney transplant operation has come and gone; everything was remarkably successful.  The removal was virtually painless for me, and my brother is now a "new man". I do not think that we really knew how ill he was, but we do now as we see a much fitter version, literally "in the pink" and no longer feeling tired all the time. All the stats are going in the right direction and so he just has to re-adjust to a life of balancing anti-rejection drugs with the risk of infection (as the drugs inhibit the immune system).

If you are interested in the idea of living kidney donation, please see the whole story of my donation at http://diaryofakidneydonor.blogspot.co.uk/. It's quite surprising - I'm a reserved logical person but this experience has really found the emotion in me (especially the entry on Oct 21st).

Please become an organ donor - see http://www.organdonation.nhs.uk/ - and make sure that your next of kin know that this is what you want.  Apparently a surprisingly high number of donor card holders do not donate anything when they die because their relatives still have a veto.  At least I can be sure that my next of kin know how I think!

I now have a good excuse to catch up on gentle activities like walking, writing and reading as, even though I feel great, I am banned from doing anything more serious than lifting a glass or mug for a fair while.

The Year's Work Draws to a Close

My impending operation (see http://diaryofakidneydonor.blogspot.co.uk/) is now only a week away so the end of the year's work is close for me.  I will be in no position to be able to do anything at all strenuous or difficult for some time, almost certainly into 2014. That will of course mean that any lifting is out but even bending down might be too much for me for a while. These last few days have been concentrated therefore on doing various odd bits which either really must be done now (or wait for another year) or else are things which have a benefit exceeding the time and effort required (i.e. they please 'Er Indoors).

One important thing was to put an insert into the chimney pot for the fire in the third bedroom.  We have twice had an idiot wood pigeon fall down this, presumably by falling asleep and overbalancing (and probably not the same bird).  The first time was before I fitted the secondary glazing; it got into the bedroom and I was able to open the window and shoo it out.  The second time was this summer and I had fortunately removed the secondary glazing for ventilation; this time it was sat just up in the chimney refusing to budge, so I had to open the window, reach up with a gloved hand, grab and then quickly throw whatever I had grabbed out of the window.  It flew off leaving a trail of feathers, but it was not impressed at this treatment!

The difficulty in stopping pigeons falling down was that (a) I didn't want to block off the chimney as it needs to be ventilated, (b) the top of the chimney is about 9 feet above the gutters so it is VERY high and (c) the chimney is rectangular and no-one seems to sell a rectangular vented clay hat.  I therefore made my own device but it looks so odd that I'm embarrassed to add a photo of it. To fit it I borrowed a ladder which reached the fascia and used a long pole with a hook on the end and managed to lower the device into place without falling off the ladder.  Thinking about that now, perhaps I shouldn't have taken that risk as any injury would have scuppered the operation next week.

Secondly, I've had to cut the grass which was only laid a couple of weeks ago.  I thought that this would not be needed again before winter but it was almost 10cm high, so I've done a high trim. It looks as though it has been down for years.

Thirdly, I've been doing various bits in the lounge, such as tackling the plaster which was damaged during fitment of the window (the one fitted in June 2011...).  I've also sorted the wooden poles which form the corners of the plaster on the chimney breast and the window bay.  These had been papered over years ago but have now been scraped clean and given a coat of wood hardener which has brought them up nicely.  Finally, I removed the door and cut a half inch off the bottom so that we can lay carpet somewhen; while it was off I decided to remove the brown gunk (it's not paint or varnish) on the inside, ready for painting somewhen. When all the dirty work is done we can seriously plan to buy a carpet, which will please the other half a lot!

The final job was outside again: the ivy in one apple tree had been ignored as it gave privacy and security (as well as cover for birds).  I realised that it was very high so I decided to remove a lot of this to allow the tree to breathe again and possibly grow better next spring. It's a once a year job for the autumn only so it was now or leave it for another year.  Now I have to dispose of the foliage!