Will No One Rid Me of this Terrible Builder?
Obviously, the title of this post is with apologies to King Henry II
I needed to have my daily lukewarm soak, this afternoon, and guess what, I was bitten again by some junk that Jerry had installed, that masquerade in the name of taps. There’s a video of them here, but it doesn’t show the cold top falling off, because obviously so many people have been fooled by it’s unusual direction.
From Victoria to Wandsworth Road
Wandsworth Road station is the station on the new South London line closest to the terminus of line at Clapham Junction station.
These pictures were taken on the short route from Victoria to Wandsworth Road.
It is not the best area architecturally of the capital and is dominated by the disused and falling down Battersea Power Station. Whether and how the Northern Line Extension to Battersea is built, should make a difference to the area.
I’m tending to think though that the best thing to do, would be to demolish the Battersea Power Station first. All it seems to do is bankrupt developers these days. You have to remember that power stations built in the early part of the twentieth century were built for a short life span, after which they were demolished. Battersea Power station is proving that rule by falling down on its own.
Confusing Bath Taps
This video shows my bath taps.
I thought it was just me, but then my lady who does finds them just as confusing.
i suspect Jerry, picked them up cheap in a car boot sale. The bath is bad too as getting in and out isn’t easy.
The Ways of Cowboy Builders
I’ve always found that the deeper I probe this house the more I find terrible examples of Jerry’s handiwork. I was talking at lunchtime, with the builder working on the house opposite and I happened to mention that there were no manuals for any of the appliances. He thought that typical, as if you can’t find where anything was bought, you can’t get back at him. I suppose it could almost mean that a lot of things fell of the back of a lorry. It also might mean, why we couldn’t find the serial number on the dish washer at first. I have now.
A Property Developer With A Good Sense of Humour
The Times today reports that property developer, Peter Beckwith is going to build a large data centre called MK Data Vault on a site once owned by Robert Maxwell in Milton Keynes. He has invited Mirror Group pensioners, who had their pensions stolen by Maxwell’s greed to attend the demolition.
A Crap Cheap Lock
My second bedroom was fitted with a lock by Gerry, but I never received the keys when I bought the house.
So as I might be renting the room out during the Olympics, I felt it might not be a bad idea fit a new lock. I easily removed the faceplace from the lock to get at the screws that held it into the door and managed to price the lock from the door without much effort.
But when I came to fit the new lock, that I’d bought for ten pounds or so, I couldn’t get the faceplate off, as when it had been assembled one of the screwed had been jammed in at an angle. in the end I completely stripped the cross head of the strew, due to the large amount of plastic in whatever metal it was.
A Cheap Crap Lock
So as the picture shows, I will now have to buy a new lock again, just because the one I bought was so crap. The faceplate bent, whilst I was seeing if I could use a bit of brute force and ignorance to free the screw.
Cleaning Ducts
Outside my house at the moment is a van from a company that says it cleans ducts.
By this it means those big air vents you get in places like kitchens and I guess they are cleaning the ducts in the pub a couple of doors away, that is being refurbished.
It reminds me of a story about Enfield Rolling Mills.
An apprentice called Dave Howard was asked to clean the ducts in the canteen. On putting his head inside, he found that they contained quite a number of rats. As he didn’t like the thought of mixing it in the ducts with little furry animals, he decided on another course of action. He just switched everything off and made sure a lot of hot air was driven through the ducts.
The strategy worked in that it blew the rats away, but the canteen wasn’t able to sell any food for several days because of the smell.
In Search of Strata
If you look south from the river, you’ll see a curious building with what look like three clock faces. The building is called Strata London and today I went to Elephant and Castle to have a closer look at it.
Unfortunately the sun was in the wrong direction and the pictures aren’t the best.
The clocks are actually wind turbines. Although there are doubts about their effectiveness. Wikipedia says this.
Strata SE1 is one of the first buildings in the world to incorporate wind turbines within its structure. The three nine-metre wind turbines at the top of the building are rated at 19 kW each and are anticipated to produce 50MWh of electricity per year. They are expected to generate sufficient energy to provide power for the common areas of the building (8% of the energy needs of the building), although questions about their real efficiency will remain unanswered until the completion of two years of comprehensive wind data analysis.
Having lived on the 11th floor of one of the towers in the Barbican, I’m not sure that this building would be as nice a place to live.
Barclays Capital’s Skyscraper Index
This has been published every year since 1999 and according to this article by the BBC, it forecasts economic downturns.
Islington’s Hidden Temple
Walk through the back-streets of Islington and tucked away in Gibson Square, you’ll find this curious building in the garden in the middle.
A Curious Building in Gibson Square
So what is it?
The clue is in the roof, as it doesn’t look like the wire mesh would keep the rain and weather out.
But then that isn’t necessary as it is the ventilation shaft for the Victoria line.
The shaft was built in 1970 and has recently been updated to improve the cooling of the line for passengers.
The Anonymous Widower 