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