cosmictanya wrote:

And location permitting, potentially trouble free and cost free parking. You can just carelessly drive through the car park and swerve in anywhere you feel like.

Absolutely. That's what I like most about hotels. Unlimited free parking. I won't stay at ones where you park at some shopping centre across the road and get a refund. Unless someone gives me a lift there of course.

I can't currently decide between popping up to Norwich or popping across to Welwyn again. Both have second-hand bookshops of note.

Fangirl Three wrote:

cosmictanya wrote:

And location permitting, potentially trouble free and cost free parking. You can just carelessly drive through the car park and swerve in anywhere you feel like.

Absolutely. That's what I like most about hotels. Unlimited free parking. I won't stay at ones where you park at some shopping centre across the road and get a refund. Unless someone gives me a lift there of course.

I can't currently decide between popping up to Norwich or popping across to Welwyn again. Both have second-hand bookshops of note.

I'd go for Norwich out of those two. I knew a Christian virgin called Gregory who lived in Welwyn, and my own night at his family home was as fruitless as everyone else's. Many tears of envy were shed at his wedding a few years back. The most handsome guy in glasses. 
Warra waste.

Have you been to Toppings? Not second hand but fab. I can spend hours in there - worth going to Bath just for that. I love bookshops with ladders. They bring round tea and cake.

Obviously Buenos Aires is a bit far for a snatched weekend, but this place is great. Why don't we do things like this with old theatres in this country? 



That would be demolished and replaced with a Nando's and some horrible student flats if it was over here.

cosmictanya wrote:

Have you been to Toppings? Not second hand but fab. I can spend hours in there - worth going to Bath just for that. I love bookshops with ladders. They bring round tea and cake.

In my opinion, books and food should never mix - all those sticky fingers and crumbs all over the pages.

No, us Toppings goers aren't like that. It's a very considerate experience. They barely need to bother giving out napkins - gentlemen shoppers are just as likely to offer you a nice clean handkerchief. Suggesting flatteringly intelligent or stylish recommendations to other shoppers is practically a rule. Nobody would dream of leaving grease and crumbs behind.

My neighbours have told me they're giving the cones an extended play till Wednesday! On account of how their new bath turned out to be cracked and has to be replaced, and the tiler's van broke down so he couldn't come last week    

They did at least have the grace to look sheepish when they announced this. So I made a virtue out of necessity and magnanimously agreed to go along with them another 3 days.

I half suspected this would happen, which is why I decided not to go away for the weekend. Instead I've been decluttering the house to make it easier to sell so I can get away from this nonsense.

She came round yesterday evening and told me that the last day would be Monday!

I was coldly polite

Herewith a summary of the parking statistics since last June. I grade each docking procedure A-F:

A Easy in forwards, plenty of room to line up afterwards
B Easy in forwards, took some time to line up
C Close in forwards/easy backwards, took a lot time to line up
D Close backwards
E Limit of feasibility backwards
F Blocked out

A 64.1%
B 14.1%
C 9.4%
D 4.7%
E 1.6%
F 6.3%

So you might be thinking, 'What's the problem Fangirl? You manage to park exactly where you like 93.7% of the time, and 87.6% of the time it's pretty damn easy into the bargain.'

But don't forget, in order to achieve these figures I have to get up at 4am every Monday and take the car out for exercise and Sainsburys at 6.15, returning at 7.45. And I can't use it at any other time unless I plan to return between 7am and 2pm.

I worked out the other day that my total cost of car ownership per hour of use, all year round, is £47. It would be no more expensive if I went everywhere - even on holiday - by London black cab.

Last week on roadworks.org I spotted that the water board were going to be digging up the road outside number 19, about 100 yards away. Then large NO PARKING boards appeared, indicating a stretch of road centred on no. 19 and starting about 50 yards from here.

And on Monday a burly waterworker was delivering letters to all our houses asking us not to park in the coned area on Thursday when the work was to take place.

But there were no cones. Did that mean the area between the boards, or did it mean that cones would subsequently appear elsewhere? It is Thursday now and there are none. Perhaps very soon a truck will arrive and I'll have to pause working at home and rush outside with a coat over my relaxation clothes, to move my car

It's all very confusing. Last time there was work on the road, cones were in place like a week beforehand.

Yellow no-waiting cones have appeared, but they're only in the stretch of road between the NO PARKING boards. I went out to check.

Might be too early to say, but perhaps we're going to get through this...

That water board thing happened to me last year. It went on for weeks and we could only get water from the taps for a couple of hours at night.

I had missed the warning because it had been placed in a frame and was partly hidden by a vase of flowers on the communal mail table.

I was working from home, for up to 12/13 hours a day, and had to buy in bottles of water to have cups of tea. The drilling noise was absolutely brutal.

None of the workers were attractive. I did get some satisfaction from emptying ashtrays, empty water bottles etc into the hole when they were having breaks.

My old man is driving shoppers about in my car for cash, it turns out. He and it are also available for weddings and funerals apparently.

I've let it go for now on the proviso he keeps receipts and hands them over to me regularly so they can be dealt with in the proper way.

Last night my immediate neighbours sneaked out and moved that sign, pictured, so it was right up against my bumper, so they could park.

I lay in wait this morning and pounced out on the man neighbour when he was defrosting his car and asked him politely but firmly to put it back where it was as he left. Which much to my surprise he agreed to do, and did.

The work was supposed to finish today but I knew in my heart it wouldn't, and sure enough the watermen all b*ggered off at 2.30 leaving the signs in place till Monday. I was very resentful at having not only the weekend, but a special long weekend where I'd taken Friday and Monday off, ruined again by parking issues.

Just now I heard suspicious scraping noises and caught the neighbours from 3 doors down trying to lean the sign against my garden wall, and I surprised myself by flinging open the bedroom window and loudly ordering them to desist. It was the Chablis talking, but the Chablis speaks with authority - they sullenly carried it away and put it in a gap between cars outside their own house.

I hope that moving the sign from its official position causes a non-fatal, but very expensive crash that they get sued for  

But it's still only 8.10pm Friday - according to roadworks.org the water board's permit lasts till Monday afternoon, so this grim saga has another 2½ days in it yet.

Quote :

... and I surprised myself by flinging open the bedroom window and loudly ordering them to desist.

Fangirl Three wrote:

It was the Chablis talking, but the Chablis speaks with authority

Yes, Chablis does indeed speak with a crisply cool authority - full, elegant, supremely balanced - yet flint-edged!

Wrong-doers thus abjure from their wayward ways - chided of course, but the shame tempered - enriched indeed - by the knowledge that the whole experience has been ennobling for all.

So, when, by chance, at some future point in time, you might pass in the street, or perhaps briefly catch the other's eye across a gastropub yawning with three-wheeled prams and metre high Yorkshire puddings, or perchance across an ping-pong table in a condemned warehouse with all burning bins in and pensive tramps all stood about - a momentary, yet sweetly melancholy, smile will flicker across the faces of the two foes who once fought, but walked away... wounded, yet unbowed, with honour - dignity.

It's the £3.69 Bolivian sauvignon blanc/grenache/pinot noir blend rosé we're drinking 95% the rest of the of the time that shrieks into the pallid dawn like a rusty unhinged, un-oiled gate in a stiff breeze at a small, bewildered child on his paper round that gets us into all the trouble.

I've given myself the week off exercising the car, cos I took it round the block on Friday, and the roadworks haven't finished and I was afraid the neighbours would pinch my space.

So this week Sainsburys are coming to me with paella and Viognier (though not croquettes).