Reasons to be cheerful - The Bear and Badger

Jaco

Over the years my wife and I have taken in a couple of homeless folk. We had one chap with us for a week or so – thoroughly decent bloke, just been handed a raw deal and needed a leg-up. So we helped him get a room in a shelter and now he's got his own place and is doing well.

Did the same thing a few years ago with a lass that was sleeping rough in our area. Gave her a room for a couple of nights. Turned out she had PTSD (which meant she struggled to be around other people) and a serious lung problem from being out in the cold for so long. So we got her a hotel room for a few nights and then got in touch with social services and helped her get through the process of getting somewhere more permanent.

Now she has a little council house out in the countryside, just her and a couple of cats, and works remotely as a programmer. Perfect for her as she gets to feel like a 'normal' (whatever that is) member of society and also gets the peace / isolation she needs to cope.

Obviously I wouldn't recommend just offering any random street sleeper a room in your house for the night, but sometimes they just need some practical help for a couple fo days to break the cycle. It can make all the difference.

Unlikely

You're a good man, Jim.

Kow

Bloody do gooders, making us all look bad. Grumble...

g.man

Top fella our Jim

Jaco

It wasn't something we did lightly, and I'm not going to say we weren't worried about having strangers stay with us, but we never regretted it. Would do it again in a heartbeat.

davyK

Very impressed with that @Jaco.

ShabbyMcCrabby

Well done peoples. Much better folk than I.

Hodge360

Yeah,fair play lads. Unfortunately we suffer here with professional beggars. Clearly being exploited by human trafficking and whatnot but unfortunately giving them your spare change will not help the problem.

GooberTheHat

My mate did this to his sons nerf gun, so he could hunt dinosaurs properly.

It's awesome.

LivDiv

Nice.
Have you watched Adam Savage's (off of Myth Busters) custom NERF gun builds?

GooberTheHat

I've seen one of them. It's was impressive.

Syph79

Not sure where to put this, as I can't work out whether I'm fuming, a little smug, or just whatever the right emotions are.

We extended our house last year. I fucked up, as the start of the build came around too quickly to sort everything out properly. We had planning permission, building control and structural engineer calculations, but I didn't serve a Party Wall Notice.

I (thought) I'd smoothed it over with the neighbours, by apologising in person and then writing an and agreeing an equivalent Notice. All seemed to be okay, until the neighbour complained about the builder's sign on the scaffolding, then the timing of the works, then the debris, etc, etc. Each time, I worked with the builder to get it resolved the best we could.

After the scaffolding came down, my neighbour knocked in my door at 7.30 in the morning with someone he called an Architect - I believe it's his brother in law. I wasn't in (bless you Ring doorbell), but had a brief chat. He complained that the scope of the loft extension was too big and would need to be reduced. I said I'd meet with him another day, with my builder present.

A week later, we had the meeting and the architect was quite rude about my builder (nice chap he is too). He eventually came inside, measured and softened his position on the size of the build. They left to have a private chat.

I then received an email saying that the flank wall of the extension needed to come down. I replied, disagreed, and said that I wouldn't be changing anything unless the Council told me too. He then reported me to the Council who came after a few days and agreed that all was in order. That's kind of been the end of that issue.

However, during the works, I agreed to re-point a shared chimney at the cost of £600. I said we would need to pay half each and, to date, I haven't had any contribution at all. I'll I've had is an email saying he hoped I'd pay the whole cost as they agreed not to have a Party Wall Surveyor appointed. That has left a sour taste.

The second issue is that I spotted - after my job was done - that they had recently had their boiler moved upstairs and, as part of the move the new flue was unsafe (it was under the soffit) and that the boiler waste had been tapped into my drainage without my permission. I sent an email asking for it to be sorted out (we weren't really talking at this stage) and got called childish in a reply. Eventually, the neighbour's wife said she'd get the boiler looked into when it was serviced in the coming weeks.

Today, that same boiler has been condemned, because the person servicing it left the flue disconnected and for 3 weeks, their daughter's bedroom has had carbon monoxide backing up into it.

I'm really pissed off about the whole thing because they left a dangerous boiler alone and continued to use the same contractor, who just made it more dangerous. They also put me through hell over the build and didn't listen to my advice about the boiler, dismissing me as childish - which makes me feel a little smug.

I guess ultimately I feel relieved that nothing happened to them, or my son - who's room is next door.

Neighbours eh? Who'd have em?

ShabbyMcCrabby

That doesn't sound like a party wall at all!

I really dislike people sometimes. It's always so weird what gets stuck in people's bonnets. Is it so hard to be reasonable and work together? Is it because it's something that was a slight surprise and they instantly go on the defensive?
Very lucky that no one got hurt though. Carbon monoxide is such a dangerous thing. Over here they've been decommissioning a lot of old heaters because of CM leakages. They discovered that if there's another fan running in a close part of the house (kitchen/bathroom exhaust for example) then it pulls the monoxide into the room instead of it going outside. Unfortunately children died because of it which kicked the whole thing off.

acemuzzy

Our neighbors did a loft without even mentioning party wall anything (a thing we knew nothing about at the time), then got all anal about having one from us when we did ours (obviously without thinking back a while six months and spotting any hypocrisy).

Utter cunts.

Syph79

There’s a part of me that plans to be a utter b*stard is they do an extension, but another part that wants to remain the grown up that I am.

Skerret

dick wall

poprock

Syph79 wrote:

Neighbours eh? Who'd have em?

We’ve had so much shit with our (downstairs) neighbour and her inept building works over the past year that we’ve resolved to move and never have adjoining neighbours ever again. It’s going to cost us a mint to get a detached place where we live, but we’ll do it.

So, er … I sympathise, I guess.

Nobody seems to want to take friendly advice from experts (or even educated amateurs) when it conflicts with shitty contractors they’ve already hired, no matter how much those contractors fuck up. I ended up thinking it’s a sort of confirmation bias – once a person has chosen their architect/contractor/advisor/etc they just cannot accept that they might have made a poor choice.

Kow

Glad I moved out of the city and away from bastard neighbours. Just before we left a bunch of young women moved in upstairs and listened to techno all day long. It was move or murder them. The long commute now is worth it for the peace. There's actual silence at the moment.

afgavinstan

Closest of shaves last night. Like something out a sitcom.

So I got us two tickets to The 1975 back in October. She's a huge fan. Me? I can take them or leave them.

Fast forward to this week, and I've been put in nightshift in A&E the night of the show. I've completely forgotten to ask for the night off, and paid the price. Can't really get a shift swap as that's the absolutely number one shift people don't want. There's no point trying. Fuck.

So I tell her and proceed to swallow a massive amount of shit over the issue. She's rightly annoyed but my hands are tied. We eventually settle on her taking her pal, and that's that. Plus we're gonna go away soon so it's not the end of the world. I only know and like a few songs anyway.

"So you have the tickets, right?", I ask.
"No. Remember, you got them from ticketmaster, so why would I have them?"
I quickly rack my brain for some kind of spark, reminding me exactly what happened. She's looking annoyed again. Fuck.

"Oh yeah, it was me, wasn't it?"*

*- I have no fucking clue.

She looks unimpressed, still. I get my phone and sign in to ticketmaster. She's right, they were bought in my name. She knows somethings up.

"You know where they are Gav, don't you?"
"Yes, of course. They're sitting by my record player. I remember seeing them there just before Xmas."*

*- Massive lie.

That was Saturday. Got back home yesterday and proceeded to forget I was supposed to look until last night around 10pm. So I have a poke about. Nothing.

I can't remember them arriving. I can't remember speaking to anyone in the house (mum/Scott) about them. I don't remember a thing about them at all. I'm at a complete loss. Mum's in bed, Cullen's sleeping.

I start to panic. But then it gets worse..

In looking at my emails for concrete info that they actually got sent to my house and not hers, and spot one from Ticketmaster about this specific gig, and blah blah blah "the artist has requested.." this and "fighting touts" that, basically, the cardholder who payed for the tickets apparently has to attend. So now not only can I not find the tickets, even if I do, she can't go.

Precisely at this fucking moment as I start to really panic, my whatsapp starts pinging. It's her.

I see the start of each message through the notification banner. (she likes to text in sentences in separate texts)
"So I think rach is gonna come Saturday.."
"She's got the time off and loves them.."
"It's seating, isn't it?"
"Whats the seat numbers again? xxx"

Oh fuck. Oh fuck. OH FUCK.

So at this point I'm pretty much writing my obituary. I'd already let her down by not getting it off, if this all came out, I'd be fucking dead. Not in an unhealthy relationship got me by the balls way, it's just I hate disappointing anyone, especially her, and get upset when I do. How could I fuck up again? Why can't I remember shit like this? WHERE THE FUCK ARE THE TICKETS??

I hear noise downstairs. Toilet flushing. The only option not explored yet is Mum. Maybe I gave them to her for safe keeping, preempting me being a massive fanny. I run downstairs hoping to catch her.

"Mum! Mum... Mum... You really need to help me here."
"What? What? What is it? What?", she's visibly concerned. I'm outta breath.
"I dunno if you remember... But there's this gig, and I got tickets and I can't remember and I'm panicking and I can't find them..."

By the time I said "tickets" she was off. Straight to the TV cabinet. Took her 5 seconds. There they were.

After a relief hug and a explanation of what was going on, we both went back upstairs. I return to my dungeon to see my phone lighting up. It's Shona.

"Hello?"
"Haaaaay. Did you get my text about the seat numbers? Was just phoning to ask.."
"Ah! Yes, sorry, I did. I've got them in my hand right now..."

afgavinstan

Doesn't seem like much at all but I swear I aged about twenty years in half an hour last night.

poprock

That was a rollercoaster. Top marks to your Mum.

Hodge360

poprock wrote:

That was a rollercoaster. Top marks to your Mum.

Was going to put off reading the long post til I read this out of context.
Top work ma gav.

FranticPea

Hang on though, I thought you had to attend still?

Moot_Geeza

Yeah but he almost nailed himself to the back wall of the doghouse.

Unlikely

FranticPea wrote:

Hang on though, I thought you had to attend still?

Yeah, this is where I am also confused...

poprock

Well yeah. The saga continues.

Skerret

I think we should all send mum a gift

davyK

Prob just needs to bring the payment card with her.

afgavinstan

Well I doubt they'll be that stringent considering the vast majority of the people there will be teenage girls who've been bought them off their mums and dad's but I've offered to chaperone to the door, clear up any confusion, and bail.

g.man

Just give Shona the card they were bought with to take along.

*edit* nevermind, I see you have a plan.

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