My wife and I don’t do Valentine’s Day. We’d rather be romantic at other times, when it’s not expected of us. Instead, we try to find each other the worst, tackiest, most offensive or most unpleasant card possible. And we’re pretty competitive…

First up, card A - Twilight. The only possible person who’d buy this is a teenage girl. And why on earth would a teenage boy want to receive this? Vampire Love = Necrophilia + Bestiality. Terrible. And it cost £1.99 from ASDA.

And in the opposite corner, card B - Country Cottage. A foul, twee, abomination bought from eBay and with the distinctive musty smell of attic. Only a slightly senile old person, who also smelled musty, could possibly enjoy receiving this.

UPDATE: The lines are closed, the votes have been counted and verified. I’m pleased to announce that Twilight is the worst card this year. Twilight was my choice for @apennyforthem, though I thank her for finding me something absolutely horrible too.

Related posts:

1. Why I'll Stop Using PayPal

Every Thursday morning while growing up, my mum and her sister would take my nan shopping. While they were out me, my big brother and my cousins would go for a walk with my grandfather (usually to the cemetery).

When the shoppers returned, lunch would be cooked. A meal which forms the smell and the taste of my childhood: cheese and onion dip.

I’ve no idea where this recipe came from. I certainly never heard of anyone else who ate it when I was growing up, but it must go back a long way. My mum says she was also brought up on it and whilst her own grandmother didn’t actually cook it (she was an invalid), it was certainly cooked and served in my mum’s grandmother’s house by nan. I imagine it’s a war recipe, the sort of thing housewives threw together from what was available. It might even go back further.

Googling the ingredients brings up nothing. Outside of a northern town, it doesn’t seem ever to have existed. Outside of my family it appears to have died before the 1970s. So here’s how to make it. I’d love it if you tried. I think it’s delicious – though nostalgia plays a part. For best results, eat two to a chair at my nanny’s dining table in the kitchen, with numerous people arriving and moving on during lunch hour and a pot of strong, hot tea keeping your mug filled.

• Firstly, dice an onion. Not too fine. Fry gently on a low heat until it’s soft and starting to turn translucent. Do not brown it!
• Add around 100-150g of diced cheshire cheese per medium-sized onion. Immediately cover the mixture with boiling water.
• Simmer gently, stirring constantly and gently to make the cheese melt. The gravy should be thin and quite watery
• The cheese and onion mixture can be kept warm on a low heat indefinitely.
• Serve with several slices of grilled back bacon (unsmoked is best, as everyone knows) and a huge pile of fresh, soft, white bread to mop up the gravy.

The following letter caught my eye, in today’s Brighton Argus:

THE explanation for such common “light-patterns”, as seen by Lisa Stewart (Letters, February 3), is simple.

The key to this is in her letter itself. The sunlight is being reflected from the glass of a double-glazed window onto an opposite wall. This often cross-pattern is formed by the glass panes not being entirely flat.

If you watch them for a short period you will see that they move, because of the Sun.

I couldn’t find the original letter, but it appears they’re talking about a strange phenomenon I experienced myself. I took the photo, below, on Gloucester Place last year. It’s obviously a reflection, and it took me 5 seconds to find out where it was coming from. Simply by standing in the light and looking, I pinpointed it as a particularly pretty pattern caused by a sunny window opposite.

A further poke around the Argus website revealed that the writer of the original letter, Lisa Stewart, has been banging on about this for at least a decade. She first crops up in June 2002, with a full-blown article about these strange and mysterious lights.

The lights… have baffled experts.

Lisa, 36, first saw the mysterious beams six years ago and took some photographs but thought little more about them.

Then, as summer warmed up this year, the Xs began to appear again.

She said: “In the last few months, I’ve been seeing a lot of these circles in my garden, around my house and around Brighton and Hove.

“I think they are a strange phenomenon, on a par with crop circles. I know other people have seen them but I think you have to be receptive to them. Maybe I’ve seen them because I’ve been looking for them.”

They’re unusual shapes, I’ll admit. But hardly the stuff of science fiction. I dread to think who the ‘experts’ were that the Argus contacted. However, the mystery deepens as Lisa pops up a few days later, along with others claiming to see faces in them:

Lisa believes the face could be either that of her daughter’s guardian angel or a spiritual teacher.

She goes away to puzzle over these signs and symbols from the astral plane, but returns in December 2002 with a third full article in the paper.

This summer the circles began to reappear and in the last couple of weeks even more have been spotted.

Lisa said: “I’ve seen loads of circles – about 100 – in the past week.

“Normally, I would only see five or six in a week. I don’t know why there should be so many more at this time of year but I think it may be a sign that, particularly at this time of year, people need to think more about goodness and peace.

“The cross is symbolic when people die and I think there may be a message there that lots of people do not want a war with Iraq.”

“I had phone calls from 26 people who had similar experiences. Most of them felt they had seen the lights during a time of crisis and thought they might have a healing purpose.

Whilst our heroine has noticed some sort of link with war, sadness and death, she appears not to have noticed the more obvious connection to sunny days and windows. However, things took a more sinister turn in January 2003:

The appearance of an ‘alien’ figure – tall, thin and apparently wearing a spherical breathing helmet – is a novelty.

One local mum said she was too terrified even to give her name.

She said: “I am absolutely petrified of them because I can’t explain how they get there or what they mean.

“I don’t know if they are a sign from aliens or a warning that something is about to happen.”

The paper doesn’t record whether anything actually happened. However the trail goes cold. Clearly, the on-going Iraq war wasn’t enough to encourage these beings to be more forthcoming with their messages of peace. It’s not until now, February 2012, that Lisa reappears – still blissfully unaware of the reflective properties of shiny glass.

You won’t be surprised to learn that Lisa Stewart is a homeopath.

Last autumn, we found ourselves coming out of a very tough year. Our 3rd wedding anniversary was an opportunity to celebrate the fact that we’d somehow got through it all. As it’s a bit of a tradition to spend our anniversary somewhere in the UK, I took my wife to one of my favourite cities: York.

I love history, architecture and archeology (and cakes and good restaurants) and away from the 80s shopping centre, York has it all. It also has one of the best breweries in the country, which unusually for a small brewery has it’s beer proudly sold in pubs right across the city.

We spent the first morning exploring the city by following the York Cat Trail. This is a fun walk put together by the nice people at a glass shop in the medieval shopping street, The Shambles. The cats themselves are small statues scattered on buildings around the city. Many are a hundred years old, dating from the time when cats were lucky for both warding off witches and keeping away rats. The tradition was revived by architect and artist Tom Adams, who has been adding cats since the 80s.

There are 19 cats on this particular trail, which should apparently take a couple of hours to find. However, by combining the walk with forays down interesting streets, through the beautiful university park and into shops, cafes and restaurants (with just one or two cakey treats) we took a whole day and still didn’t see them all.

We were in town at the same time as the Illuminating York festival, which allowed us a wonderfully atmosphere walk around the city wall by candlelight. There was also a light installation in the grounds of the Minster and an incredible video sequenced projection on the walls of the Castle Museum.

We also had time to explore inside the excellent Castle Museum (tracing over 100 years of domestic history and including a full-scale Victorian street), climb Clifford’s Tower for some great rooftop views, take time out for a massage and enjoy a spot of squirrel-whispering.

The only disappointment is the ludicrous cost of visiting the Minster. It’s one of the most intricate and spectacular churches in the world, with breath-taking stained glass including the famous Rose Window. But it costs a whopping £9 per adult to go into the church and another £5.50 to ascend the tower. As we always seek out the highest points of a city, the tower was a must – and gives close-up views of the gargoyles, and out across the city to the countryside beyond. We left the entrance to the cathedral itself, the Church of England are rich enough.

Of course, no visit to York would be complete without a trip to Betty’s, where I happily demolished a fine afternoon tea in a stunning art-deco tearoom.

York is a city I visited many times as a child and keep being drawn back to as an adult. I know this won’t have been my last visit.

Related posts:

1. Isle of Wight Photos
2. Mechanical Haunted Room

UPDATE: The final addendum to this post is that we’ve had a personal email from Mr Dennison, offering a full and sincere apology – which we have, of course, accepted. Whilst we still have issues with how the council go about major works, the incident on Twitter is finished.

If you’ve read any recent posts, you’ll know that I’m unhappy not only about the extortionate bills from the council, but also their single-minded righteousness and refusal to enter a meaningful discussion.

The middle-management gnome at the centre of this was one Mark Dennison, who just sent me the following tweet:

mark_dennison (Mark Dennison)

@electroweb you will be glad to know i have left the Council now so you can moan to someone else……have fun

6:51 PM Jan 7th via web

Good to know that the concerns and feelings of residents and taxpayers are taken seriously by council employees. What a warm feeling to know that those whose wages we pay, through tax and the charges on my property, hold us on such high regard. What wonders this does for the level of trust between leaseholders and council!

Update: Mr Dennison deleted his tweet almost immediately. He’s clearly a man who stands by his words.

Update 2: By the morning following this tweet, Mr Dennison’s entire Twitter account had been deleted. To be clear, although many people got in touch with him in support of us, there was no hounding or abuse and everyone was polite.

Related posts:

1. Twitterquette and Sharing Stuff
2. Brighton Council’s New TV Aerial
3. A Letter To Brighton Housing Department

In futile exasperation, I’ve written the following letter to Mark Dennison of Brighton & Hove City Council. He’s the man at the top when it comes to their ludicrously expensive, random and unstoppable maintenance of my home, and I’m sick of trying to get any answers (or any kind of sympathetic response) from him. He’s the consummate local council middle-manager, lets put it that way…

Dear Mr Dennison

Thank you for your letter dated 15th December, which yet again made me furious by your failure to engage with me on the issues I’ve raised. I give up trying to communicate with you about this, as you appear utterly unable to talk to me on a human level about my very real and upsetting concerns about the way you deal with these issues. All I’ve had from anyone at the council is stonewalling, misdirection and legal-speak when I had hoped that someone, somewhere would just LISTEN and understand and at least try to sympathise and meet us halfway.

You don’t seem to get it, do you? This isn’t a council building. This isn’t a programme of maintenance for bricks and mortar and machinery. This is MY HOME. This is a home that I used to love. This is a home in which I met my wife, set up my adult life and have enjoyed for almost a decade. A home that has deep emotional resonance – a place of laughter and tears, a place of fun and work and joy and sadness. A place of parties and of arguments. It’s a place I hoped to bring up my children and a place where I need to feel safe and happy and secure, where I’ve spent the happiest times of my life.

The council ride roughshod over this. They choose jobs seemingly at random and over which I have no control and no say. You claim to consult, but you keep proving yourselves incapable of listening. You’re like automatons – resistance to your works is futile and everything that you do is good. The consultation is only ever which of the high costs I should pay, never whether it needs to be done and never when it should be done.

Please, just this once, try to see it from my point of view. Imagine you’re sitting in your home, and a roof contractor turns up. He tells you that your roof needs fixing. You’ve not been told this before, no-one warned you and no-one explains what the problem is. You don’t get to shop around for quotes, you don’t get to question the costs because the roof contractor blandly tells you it’s been done already and done properly and that he’s right. His answer to your every question is “I’m right, please stop asking”. He tells you that he’s not the cheapest, but there’ll be on-going maintenance. You fail understand what could possible need maintenance, because no-one you know has on-going maintenance for their homes, but tough because the contractor insists. He then does some work on your roof and hits you with a bill for £5000.

He then does the same for your TV aerial. You’ve haven’t got Sky and never want it, but he installs it anyway and charges you £300. He refuses to explain why. All the people who wanted Sky already have it, but they now have to get rid of their dishes because the contractor is about to enforce a planning law that has been ignored for 22 years.

Then he does the same for water tanks. That’ll be £3000 please. He suddenly says you need to pay for a new security door that you didn’t know was a problem. He marches you down to the timber yard and makes you buy and install a new front door. There’s works to some doors that caused an overspend on the annual maintenance. Except spending £12000 more than you estimated isn’t an overspend in the council’s world, is it?

And all of this happens at random times and each thing comes as a surprise. You might’ve just spent your savings on a holiday. Maybe you needed a new kitchen? Tough. The contractor is god and when he arrives the work is done (probably badly) and you must pay. Put it off until next year? Put it off at least until we’re out of the worst recession for 50 years? Ha! You’ll be lucky. Kerching!

Then he hits you with the big one: £10,000 please. Oh, and a couple of hundred quid for new lights. Yes, I know the old lights came on at night and light up the place and I know the lights could be replaced at any time in the next decade. But no, right after the £10,000 seems appropriate doesn’t it?

Do you not see? Do you still not get it? It just keeps coming and I have no say, no control. I’m powerless and you’re bleeding me dry. I don’t earn much money. The lift bill will wipe out my savings, and max out my mortgage. It comes on top of all the things above (and more). What happens next year? What happens when you suddenly decide to replace the perfectly serviceable windows or put down some nice new flooring?  You won’t even talk to me about it, you won’t even explain or discuss or engage. You just trot out the line that everything is right and proper and the extraordinary costs are “value for money”. Well, it’s not your money is it? No wonder you don’t actually care. But it IS my money and it IS my home and I care deeply.

At the moment I can see no alternative but to sell up and leave. I’m considering my options, but the stress of a letter from the council landing on my mat is simply too much, with the worry that the next one will drive me into debts I can’t afford. But if I do decide to leave, I want you to know this: YOU will have driven me out of a home that I love. YOU will have forced me out because you refuse allow me the courtesy of discussion on a human level. You’ve turned the best decision I ever made in moving here into a stressful nightmare.

In short: you’re turning the home that I love into somewhere I’m beginning to hate. And that is unforgivable.

Merry Christmas

A wise use of 20p, York Castle Museum

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhUpOcx9wCg

Related posts:

1. Ever seen an entire building reconfigure itself?
2. HAPPY NEW YEAR!
3. About Bloody Time…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmrBMIx1hck

Related posts:

1. HAPPY NEW YEAR!
2. Terrifying Lucky Fish
3. The World’s Stupidest Dalek

Further to my last blog about Brighton Council’s proposed £430,000 replacement of the two lifts in my building, I did my own investigations.

I spoke to Thyssen Krupp, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of lifts. Obviously they haven’t inspected the job and don’t know exactly what’s involved, but they were happy to give me ballpark figures for replacement of two lifts.

There were several options, from refurbishment to full replacement, including stopping at alternate floors as they do now, or making both stop at all floors. But the bottom line is that this work should be costing no more than…

£270,000

And that’s without the economies of scale that you could negotiate with a several-month contract to install new lifts in half a dozen or more buildings.

So there’s a 40% markup somewhere along the way. I will not be letting this drop.

With thanks to Simon, area sales rep of Thyssen Krupp and jolly nice guy. 

Related posts:

1. My £10,000 Bill From The Council

I’ve already written about Brighton Council’s new communal TV aerial for my building, which cost a mere £13,000 to install. But today I got an even bigger shock through the post.

I live in an 11-storey block, and there are a pair of lifts. The lifts are old, yes. But they work. Occasionally, they break down. But they’re soon fixed (usually a day or so). Today, I learned that the council have put out a contract to have both lifts replaced.

The cost to me, personally, is estimated to be over £10,000.

That’s a cost to the block of almost £500,000. Half a million pounds.  I live in one of half a dozen blocks on this road. So that’s £3 million cost to the council and its leaseholders in one easy swoop. Ludicrous.

The document the council sent me has two interesting figures. They say the estimated on-going maintenance costs before the works is £2620 per year. After the works, the on-going maintenance cost to the block will be £2430. This means that a half million quid lift upgrade will save just £190 a year in maintenance. Or £4.44 annually for my share.

The sensible thing to do when deciding whether to replace something expensive is to check if it’ll cost more to keep the old one going than just buy a new one. For example, you wouldn’t spend £1000 fixing an old car if a new one would only set you back £2000 and not need any work for 5 years. This is called ‘payback time’: how long before the new one pays for itself compared with repairs on the old one.

In the case of my lifts, it’ll take 2000 years for the maintenance savings to be worth the cost of replacement.

Where I’m going to find ten grand, I have no idea. The galling part is that there’s never any consultation. They never discuss whether it should be done in the first place, just decide they’re going to do it. There’s no thought about timing (i.e. during the biggest recession this country has seen in decades, one which is likely to get worse) and no option to have it deferred. The council decide that it needs to be done, and so it’s done. Though how they prioritise this themselves, during reduced income, service cut-backs and budget savings, I’ve no idea.

I pay them almost £900 a year in ‘maintenance’. Why they don’t make that £1200 a year and keep a slush fund I don’t know. The sensible thing to do might be to charge us all for major works, but in arrears – so each month for the next ten years would have £40 added on for the new lifts (this would also spread the costs fairly to people who move in after the works have been done). But in the past 8 years I’ve had to find £5000 for a new roof, £3000 for new water tanks and £1000 for a new security door. Plus the world’s most expensive TV aerial and redecoration costs. And now my £10,000 bill.

Oh, and £1000 a couple of years back when they spent WAY over the estimated annual maintenance in replacing fire doors. Not that the fire doors were actually replaced, but they said they were and who am I to argue? Maybe they were replaced with ones identical to the originals. Speaking of fire doors, they are apparently also well within their rights to tell me that my private front door – one they fitted in the past – no longer complies with fire standards and I need a new one. At my own cost (they’ll fit one for £800, no chance).

The council will, of course, loan me the money for our luxury lifts. But there’s no way I’m going to give them the 5% interest they’d charge (variable, and who would trust this shower not to bump it up to 15% next year?). I’d rather stick it on the mortgage, though I’ve no idea if my bank will extend it by that much given the state of the economy.

When you own a home outright, you have a choice on when to do major works. You can patch up and get on with it while you save, you can defer some things and not others, you can prioritise jobs and at least have the knowledge that next year there’ll be something to pay for. Not when you’ve got a profligate landlord, staffed by idiots.

A bit of Googling suggests a 10 storey lift should cost about £100k to install. This shouldn’t be a big job, it’s replacing an existing one, so there should be little or no structural work to do. Anyone know whether the £500k for two in one block price is even remotely legit? Especially given the economies of scale in replacing them all at the same time. Seems huge to me…