Overheard Hotspot for Plan B

Overheard in the restaurant:

Chairman: "You do know that I do it for you, don't you?"


Hay: "What?

Chairman: "Keep myself looking unattractive; it stops other women getting interested in me."

Hay: "I think I'd rather take the risk!" 


The blog briefly became an internet hotspot On Saturday - I had some two and a half thousand hits. Investigation of the pages causing such a flurry of activity showed it was one with an image of the American actor, Ben Gazzara, who died on Friday. That image is apparently in the top line of a Google  image search of the chap.

The builder started putting the oak cladding on one the the gable ends of the house on Thursday, but then hit a problem that he hadn't anticipated. This resulted in a day and a half's work going down the pan, him apologising profusely and refusing to take any payment for him of his other two chaps, despite Hay and I assuring him that the build was a leaning curve for us all and we had no problem with paying him. If only more tradesmen were like that.

Plan B goes into action today.

Talking of planning - I find it illogical that you're not allowed to change a Grade II listed building in any manner, even to bring the accommodation up to a decent standard; yet planning regulations forbid you to build a house with the kind of period features that Grade II listing stops you changing.  

It's precisely a lack of planning regulations throughout the majority of England's existence that has created  the wonderful architecture we have, and now planning regulations have left us with a myriad of hideously inadequate chicken coops.