Hi Everyone
,
If you are approaching middle age, you will remember a cheesy song that was popular in the 1950s - Green Door. One line in the song does "Wish they'd let me in so I could find out what's behind the green door". Well, this is a story of a lady in Edinburgh who decided to have her front entrance door painted pink, in fact rather a bright pink which she preferred to the original white colour. The problem is that this lady's house is in a UNESCO World Heritage New Town area of the city so, yes you have guessed it, someone objected and she is faced with a possible £20,000 fine. If she wanted a colour other than the original white colour, she had to make a planning application to the local council so she applied to have the door painted green. In the area there are red, blue, white, black, brown, and various other coloured doors but apparently, a green door was not acceptable to the planners. As their decision did not come soon enough, she had to repaint the door to avoid a possible fine, so the lady had the door repainted in what she describes as off white and therefore admissible. The problem is that her description of off white looks more like pale pink so now another objection has been lodged with the council. Perhaps we will never know what goes on behind the green or is it an off white/pale pink door except that it seems to be an expensive way of getting what you want.
When our children were young we had a number of lovely holidays in Brittany in Northern France. One of the highlights of those holidays was to go into a fresh fish shop or Poissonnerie as the French call them. Why would that be a highlight I hear you ask but it was just one of those shops that you had to experience even though you had no intention of buying anything. Over the years, we have done much traveling but we have never been to Barcelona in Spain. Apparently, there is a historical shop there that tourists flock to visit even though they do not make a purchase. Now this is the clever bit. The shop owners have put a sign in the window charging 5 Euros for tourists to enter the shop, designed to ensure that their regular customers could shop in comfort. The idea has been so successful that the regular shoppers are happy and the shop has not had to make a single 5 Euro charge. Can you imagine the delight on the Senior Partners' face if she had been able to charge customers to enter the Fruit, Vegetable, Florist, Game, and Lolly shop. Come to think about it, with the prices she charged and her clever use of the scales, customers were paying for the privilege of entering the shop without even knowing it.
While the Main Contractor was suffering from her recent kidney infection she was thinking and at times hallucinating. The bottom of the garden gets the sun in the late afternoon and evening, when we actually see the sun of course, which is not much at the moment, but all our garden seating is at the top of the garden. The idea was to have a small patio area so that one set of table, seats and parasol could be relocated there. As soon as she was fully recovered this became a top priority. It involved stripping part of the lawn, stone fill, sand and cement, concrete edgings, and large heavy ceramic patio tiles. Despite reminding her that we are approaching middle age, the work started last week. When we completed our house fifteen years ago, I dreamed of never carrying and mauling heavy items ever again but of course, it is the Main Contractor we are talking about. For the last ten days we have worked for half an hour, sat down to recover for half an hour, or for as long as our backs would hold up. If you think that we are totally mad, I am in full agreement but yesterday, between the constant rain showers, it was completed. Now I have passed on two conditions to the Main Contractor. Firstly, whether it is sunshine, rain, wind or snow I want to see her sitting down there with a hot drink and the next time she has a thought or worse still a hallucination, don't even ask as the answer will be a definite NO.
Just a Thought :
My friend used to work at a revolving door company. Then he realised that the job was going nowhere fast.
About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
PS. The good news is that our granddaughter and her friends got their tickets to see Taylor Swift at Wembley Stadium in London. The bad news is that the concert is not until August next year!!.
Brian