Meanwhile back at the ranch...

OK so it doesn't look like the iPhone blogs going to get the update I'm waiting for any time soon. For some reason I thought it would be Saturday but, no such luck.

Back in the real world however life goes on.

Since moving out a year ago our neighbour has resolutely failed to sell their half of the house. This has been absolutely lovely for us because it's left us feeling like we owned the whole house and all the land which of course we don't. In our defence it's also left us with all the maintenance of the garden as well which is not insubstantial. We could just have let stuff go at that side but the grounds are shared and it would have made our house look like crap. So we've put flower pots right down the drive on his side, some small trees up to screen it from the road, pots all along the front of the whole house and either side of the door whilst I've been keeping the weeds down and fixing the pot holes in the tarmac after last years snow. Whilst picking up his van (which he still parked in our drive) the neighbour actually offered us money for keeping the garden so lovely. If it didn't sell it certainly wasn't because of the state of the grounds he said.

Well it hasn't sold so he's been forced to let and last week a new wagon pulled up at the ranch. When I say ranch I do of course mean house. When I say wagon...Unfortunately I do mean wagon or long wheelbase, high roof Mercedes van to be precise. Now the drive is a decent size. The house is basically like an island with drive all the way round and a tiny patch of grass but there is a limit. The owner on the other side has a van and double length trailer and we have two cars. The problem with what is basically a single lane road around the house is that you block it when you stop. This means that you actually have to organise how you park or everyone gets stuck. I park tight to the back garden fence which leaves enough room in front to get a vehicle past. My wife parks flat against the basement door which again keeps the path free and the owner of next door blocks one side of the drive with his van and trailer but it's not a problem because the other side is free.

The new neighbour however was parked in front of the house. This was not only unsightly but, given the size of the van completely blocked our view of the garden. Rather than annoy the new neighbours and get off to a bad start I phoned the owner. I asked the owner to take his van away so that the new neighbours could have his space and the status quo would return.

It was a tense moment. The problem with shared land is...it's shared. As long as he owns his property then he can park whatever he wants in the drive (as can we) and it would be an expensive legal battle to do anything about it. Fortunately he was quite OK about. I think it had already occurred to him and he'd decided to play fair. Unfortunately rather than tell the neighbours that he was moving out so they can have his space. He told them that we had complained about them so hew was moving out so they could take his space. Can't have it all I suppose. We have no plans of being bad neighbours so it would soon pass.

So that was the parking sorted. Nope. The owner upheld his end of the bargain but the big double van of the new neighbours was still at the front. I was out tidying in the garden and the husband came out for something. Whilst chatting I mentioned that his landlord had now taken his van away to allow them to park. Yep he replied and said that he'd park his van away from the front tomorrow night. He gestured to say he'd put it where I park my car but I corrected him to put it where the landlord kept his van. Persistence is key. You don't have to fall out over this stuff.

Sorted? Nope. Again the van gets parked at the front. I'm furious this time. However I am wondering if maybe the tightness of the bend where I've asked him to park is what's putting him off. I find it tight in my estate car but I put that down to me being a poor driver. These van guys can usually put their lorries in very tight spaces. But if that is the reason why didn't he just say so? I contact the landlord again. This time I want him to make it clear that parking at the front is unacceptable and I don't care if he says it's me that's complaining. In case the bend is the problem I've offered to trade my space for his.

He hasn't had the van for the past couple of days and has, in separate conversations with both myself and my wife, mentioned that he will park down at my space. He gets the van back tomorrow I believe. There will be trouble if it's parked at the front.

Next, the guy wants to tell me that an extension on my house is falling down. He works for a company of concrete specialists (as a driver and labourer) and has decided that a crack above the lintel on my extension is actually the extension coming down. It isn't. We know this. It was surveyed two years ago crack and all and was fine and has all the necessary building warrants. There is no other sign of movement inside or outside beyond a crack that frames the lintel (proves that there is a lintel I suppose). It just wasn't finished very well and the render has cracked at some point in the past. He pointed this out to me like some sort of icebreaker in our very first conversation. What's wrong with talking about the weather or asking for a bowl of sugar? But he doesn't just want to point it out, he wants to get a team from his work to come round, knock it out, and sort it. This is either massive and completely unwarranted kindness or, as I suspect, an indication that the guy isn't really the full shilling and has only half an idea what he's talking about. It may have seemed a bit ungracious but this was one of those occasions when I had to say no in a way that left absolutely no doubt. I didn't want it to be like the van where, 'could you park round the side' somehow came across as 'the front will be fine'.

My extension remained untouched I'm pleased to say. But the story doesn't end there. I come home on Friday (they've been there exactly a week) and there's a couple of weird and worrying signs in the garden. There's a decent (fist sized) lump of concrete lying in the drive that's been chipped of one of the kerbing stones. There's another similar bit on the grass where I park the car. A loose bit of wall from a stair at the outside of the house has been removed from it's seat and... There's a piece of slate jammed in to the crack at the back of the extension. The neighbour, who was off that day and at home all day never saw any of it happen and has no idea how it could have happened.

So on Saturday I get some cement and fill in the crack on the extension. It needed done anyway. By doing so there's no way for foreign objects to get jammed in it. I've put the bit of wall back and am accepting that the lumps of concrete were just somehow loose (no evidence of that in the past two years).

This time when I'm filling in the crack the guy comes out and says to 'leave it till Monday and he'll get some stuff from work to re-render the whole thing'. Again I've had to be pretty blunt and to the point in saying 'No'. I'm worried that I'm going to come home and find that this freak has taken my house down. Maybe I'm just reading too much in to it because he angered me with the van. Maybe he genuinely is trying to be helpful. I'm not convinced so I'll be watching like a hawk.

This week I've also got to go down south to pilot a new training course. The place I'm going to is somewhere I haven't been since February. Yep the last time I was there was day 4 of Champix and I hadn't even stopped smoking at that stage. Read days 4-6. To think what I was going through at that stage and then think that, just over a week later, I had completely stopped smoking and am still stopped more than six months on is nothing short of incredible. On day 6 back in February I actually purchased what turned out to be my last pack of tobacco ever. It's still sitting in a drawer in my office. Back around that time I went through two 50g packs per week. I do sometimes miss smoking if I'm honest but I never miss coughing or having to find money for tobacco or being prepared to walk to the ends of the earth if that's what it took to get a pack when I'd ran out. I occasionally miss the companionship but I don't miss standing out in the cold.

Finally on Friday next week I take the car in to have the wheels photographed prior to getting them changed. For the moment that brings us closer to the end of the car saga. Although I could do without the expense of changing the wheel at the moment but it's silly to lose the chance of half price.

So I've no idea what the blog will be about next week. Hopefully there will be a jailbreak for the iPhone. God knows what my neighbour might do to the house and who knows what will happen down south.

Watch this space....

T