Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Bay window bolted to bedroom floor!

Now, the 20/20 engineer came to our street yesterday, assessing the job workers from the special contractor Clan had finished on house number 63. I could not resist and come out to talk to him and find out what he thought. He said, that they've done a good job. It works, they will give Clan the job to fix the other houses the council owns in the street and have failing bay windows. He told me that Clan have tied the leaning bay window to the front top floor bedroom, and actually pulled the whole construction back to the front wall. Impressive, I thought. And Mr 20/20 was the man who did not believe this method could work, he wanted to demolish and then build some film set ply wood & paint bay windows to please our aesthetic feelings.
Uncertainty remains: There are some houses with the same problem that allegedly don't belong to the council. I had a go to find out for a few quid from the land registry online service who's they are, but unfortunately there's a computer problem on their site. It would not give me the paid for and promised link. After complaining land registry refunded £3 and blamed my internet browser; this is rubbish, I use Firefox, latest model, and it's good.
Cairns Street is now dressed in Xmas attire: A few of us have put twinkly lights out and you can see xmas trees, baubles, twigs of holly, tinsel... Why not give the Xmas lights in Blackpool a miss this year and head for Toxteth's Cairns Street to see the real thing? ...Only joking...

Friday, December 15, 2006

The Da Vinci Clan

Things are happening in the street again. Yesterday a red Transit van, with two guys in it turned up and they started work on one of the houses with a dodgy bay window. They are back today and keep working on it. Julian and I have to suffer their constantly rattling generator as they bustle around, cutting pieces of timber, drilling into masonry and busying themselves with other power tools. I got an email forwarded from the 20/20 engineer to my neighbour where he announces this plan of action: He has got two contractors, Vinci (I have seen their corporate logo somewhere, I think in connection with railway maintenance, or maybe roadworks) and Clan. This guy from 20/20 originally said that the only save way to fix the problem is to demolish the bays. Now they will exemplary tie the bay window of house no 63 back into the front facade, then look at the result and if deemed successful use the same method on the other dodgy bay windows. I'd like to think that our persistent objection led to this change of heart, but it might be something else, like cost. Or the council officials could not sleep over the thought that lumps of victorian masonry could fall onto the street and hurt or maybe even kill somebody. In the meantime, a journalist from Manchester who visited us some time ago to write a story about us, has been in touch. Unfortunately so far she has not been able to sell our story, but I am sure she is trying. She published on indymedia for now, you can read her piece here