Home sweet home

Golf is starting to ease down now as we approach the Winter season and a shortened course at Wallasey. There was still time though for me to tick of another course when I played Woolton with (another) Captain Simon, Ste and Andrew. I now have Wigan, Hyton and Prescott, Lee Park and Gathurst to play after which I will have completed the set. All the remaining courses are inland towards Northest Liverpool and Wigan so I will probably wait until the Spring before ticking them off.

I am hosting the group at Wallasey on Tuesday next week so hopefully the current Covid restrictions will still be valid and we can have some sort of social day as well as play some golf.

I had another presentation to do on Sunday as the club hosted the Frank Stableford Open competition for elite amateur golfers. There were the usual smattering of home counties international players and handicapping was balloted out at 5. Sam Prince from Stockport golf club won with a total of 75 points over the two rounds. He was a +4 player and showed his class as he added the Frank Stableford to the Cheshire Cat he won earlier in the season. Interestingly in 2014 Matthew Fitzpatrick played his last amateur tournament in the Frank Stableford  at Wallasey before turning professional. He has not done too badly has he!!

My highlight this week though has been the opportunity to make the last payment of my current mortgage, and to finally be the owner outright of a property, with SWMBO of course, and be mortgage free. It has only taken about 45 years in a variety of homes. The first was in Upper Norwood in South London, before purchasing on the Tudor Estate in Kingston, Surrey. I lived in Chiswick, West London  for about 30 years, and used the mortgage on that to buy in Waterloo,  Merseyside. We then moved onto the Wirral where we are today. The house itself is 150 years old in 2021. Given we have not had a chance to host our usual barbecue we will make sure we have a right good 'do' next time.

In at the deep end

SWMBO arrived back safely in London at the weekend after her second trip to Tanzania to help train dental nurses as part of the Bridge to Aid scheme. She was based in the NorthEast on this occasion which allowed her to see some of the Serengeti as she was transported there. Zebra, monkey's and wildebeest were in evidence, but whether one of them was Alice is still unclear.

We then hot foot it to Alexander's christening where the poor soul was submerged in a bath of freezing water by the minister. He was christened at the same Russian Orthodox church as his sister, by the same minister, and it was still hard to watch as this little body was thrown about in gay abandon. Her cousin Ava was looking on and wondering if she had the same fate in store when she comes to getting baptised.

The reception was in the Hole in the Wall in Chiswick and I regaled the gathering with stories of a fireworks party I attended at the same venue, many years ago, when a helicopter firework came adrift and shot into the bar severely burning on of the lady punters. Not nice. Doom Bar was £3.95 a pint. It's £2.80 in the local in Oxton Village!

SWMBO and I then departed for Scouseland leaving the girls to go to Legoland. On arriving home SWMBO was presented with her brand new redecorated bedroom which a friend of mine, Peter, and I had totally rebuild while she was away. She seemed to like it although there does not appear to be enough space for all her clothes to fit back into it, it seems like a clearout may be in order.

Strangely enough I found a rugby shirt from the Protea's club in Zimbabwe which the Wildebeest had given me years ago. Its funny how ends tie up sometime.

IBM....eh

I started this blog a few years ago to track my house selling process, and my move up to Scouserland. Today the blog takes on a whole new life, as indeed do I.

Tuesday 6th November is the first day of my non-working life as I formally retire from full time employment. My pension cheque landed in my bank account, I have bought a car and booked a holiday. What more else is there to do?

Well, I think I should document the past 40 years (almost) that I have been working for IBM in the UK.

I got kicked out of college in March 1973. It was one of those Polytechnic places which the labour government were quick to change into new age universities. Ted Heath was Prime Minister, and the World Trade Centre in New York was officially opened. Watergate spelt the end of President Nixon in the USA.  After hunting around for a while, I was offered a job with IBM and started on 23rd March. the next day Pink Floyd released Dark Side of the Moon. I was hoping to stay with IBM until 24th March 2013 to get my 40 years in, but unfortunately they had other plans so here I am in leisure land.

So what did I do, and where?  I started in the Croydon location as a computer operator, a job I would not get today unless I had 11 A* at GCSE, 4 A's or better at A level, and a 2.1 degree in anything other than Information Technology!! So for me with my 6 'O' levels and two grade E A levels it was a case of right place right time. Indeed had I graduated in 1975 it is likely I would have struggled to get a job in the computer industry, and with Maggie Thatcher becoming Prime Minister the whole environment was about to be a whole lot tougher. A fellow operator, referred to only as 'Figs' to protect his identity,  is still a regular drinking mate as is his wife Marian who was also a Croydonian.

Anyway, I pushed on through the ranks as an operator and with another great friend of mine, Mike McBride, we became the pioneers of problem and change management systems and subsequently were at the forefront of service management and ITIL evolution, something which today is a seriously recognised IT qualification.

I then moved to Sudbury Towers to become a lecturer in service management operations and disaster recovery planning, and still have my PA Joyce as a chum to this day. I remember going to her 21st birthday party in The Rising Sun, and she and I went to Hyde Park the night before Charles and Di got married, for the free pop concert.

I then moved to the City of London and Basinghall Street where I was a systems engineering specialist, wow! I transferred with the job when it moved to the spanking new South Bank building next to the Festival Hall  in 1985.

It was soon after that that I had the type of move everybody can only dream of. I moved into the Chiswick office, right across the road from where I lived. Oh, the joy of running home to get the washing in when it started to rain!!

When Chiswick closed the staff were moved to Bedfont Lakes, another new location. Michael Heseltine opened it 1995. I remember being there the evening they filmed a scene from Tomorrow Never Dies. I, however went on to manage a group of UNIX nutters in Welwyn Garden City for a number of years, a job I was offered on the beach in Lisbon. If we had only had the vision, E-Bay, Lastminute and Expedia could have all been ours. Trouble was they were so focused on being techie's, growing their beards and comparing sandals, that the opportunity was lost.  They were good times in Welwyn, and I must have done something right as one day I was summons to Bedfont.

That summons resulted in a chance to manage the systems management consulting group, a group which included some of the sharpest minds in the Country, and who almost without fail, enjoyed a drink. They have elevated themselves to the high points of the Company, and many remain in regular contact. Our Manchester Christmas party is still one of the highlights of the year.

At the beginning of the 2000's IBM started to rationalise its real estate portfolio, and diminish the community spirit office work generated. I was luck enough, however,  to be posted to Knutsford near Manchester, now as a project manager, for a three year project which maintained that community spirit for a bit longer, and also qualified me for the Global Golden Circle award in 2001, an award which took me and SWMBO to Bali for a few days on the Company. That was a real experience.

That project followed on from a stint working for Logica on IBM's behalf and saw me work on-site at GCHQ for 18 months. Other projects took me to Saudi, Turkey and Brazil during a time when it was becoming evident that IBM and I had run our course. That feeling was cemented when a project in Scotland , involving travel to Chicago, went  a bit pear shaped and saw me relieved of duties earlier than planned.

I did manage to find a role in the business recovery division at Samspon House, back on South Bank, which got me to where I am today, the irony being that the business director was one of the team I recruited all those years ago in Bedfont Lakes. He did me a good deal and allowed for an honourable exit. After nearly 40 years one would hope for nothing less, but times change and some of my colleagues have not been treated with the dignity they deserved, when they were shown the door.

Undoubtedly the first ten years were the best, parties, after shift booze-up's, 5am tee off times on the golf course after night shift, page 3 girl's and the Youngs 135 Club. The next twenty years can tell a few stories too. Family dinners were riotous, the Christmas dinners were legendary and the work was pretty good too. As for the last ten years, well best forgotten really, after Bali it all went down hill. Remote working, travel restrictions, expense clampdowns and the pension debacle have all lead to the Company being absorbed into the pack. When I first joined it was the leader, and by some way.

Sofia so good....

Chiswicks best kept secret, our youngest grandaughter, Sofia, is now at the crawling stage, so we took a trip over to the flat on Friday to see her in motion.

She seems happy with herself and ambles around in a very contented way smiling at anybody whose eye she can catch. She is about eight months old now and I suspect she will soon be climbing the furniture to strengthen her legs prior to taking those first unstable steps.
At that stage, all the artifacts at floor level and probably up to about three feet of the ground will need to be moved out of reach as the wrecking ball into which babies transform, will be more than able to search and destroy.

It will be interesting what her first words will be. With a Bulgarian mother and grandmother in residence it may be something Eastern European which will probably sound like mamma or pappa any which way and no doubt she will be multi-lingual like her parents are.

It is strange that number one son has found his home in Chiswick at a time when I have vacated, but at least we know our way round when we visit.
Sofia was baptised in the local Russian Orthodox church whose vibrant powder blue spire can be viewed from the M4. The inside of the church did not have the same finish although the standard icons did cover the back wall of the church.
The  dunking took place downstairs in a giant plunge bath and I am not surprised Sofia came out screaming her head off, the water was icy cold.

We hope she will soon be able to visit Scouseland and meet the human dynamo who is Ava. Give them both eighteen  years (max) and they will be taking the pubs and clubs of England by storm....lock up your son's time!

Goodluck Jonathan

I have been running or jogging the streets for years. I tried to tie it in with my rugby training and then continued the habit once my playing days were behind me.

The most common route was a road run of just over 2.5 miles from and to Gunnersbury Station via Acton Town and Chiswick Park. In days gone by I could do it in about 20 minutes although I suspect today I would struggle to do it in less than 28.

I do wonder, though, whether it was doing me more harm than good, given that recent figures indicate 18 people a year die in Chiswick as a result of air pollution. I did move to running in the gym after I had my respiratory scare some years ago, and now that I am in Scouseland, I am able to run round Birkenhead Park and Wirral Ladies golf club which are havens of fresh air, by comparison.

Sunday saw the local Race for Life take place in said Park, and the girls, Hannah, Emma and Becky were able to complete the course in under 30 mins, with SWMBO managing a creditable 32 minutes, a little quicker than last year. Given her knee is shot and she is under the knife this week it was an excellent effort.

As with last year though I had to run the route to see how I would have done, and the answer is not too well. I went round today in 37.40. that was two minutes quicker than last weeks effort round the golf course, but still someway off my target of 35mins.

So its back on the treadmill for some serious training....the 10K in September, my one concession to Chiswick air quality, is looking a distant effort at the moment as I have 75mins to beat at that one

Snow snow thick thick snow

Today it snowed with great vigor in the London conurbation, and sure enough the whole thing stopped. I don't have a problem with that as I had planned to work in London all week and not travel to Edinburgh.

With my surname I kind of have a feel for this sort of thing occurring.

It was interesting as I walked down the High Road to see that some house owners and shops had cleared the snow, and others had not. As I understand it, if you clear the snow and the postman slips and damages himself then you are liable for the injury, if you leave the snow to its own devices and he falls over its 'an act of God' and just tough! I always leave my snow untouched...

Turnham Green was like a scene from a Lowry painting, and I would post my photos but my phone has packed up, humbug. So if I find they are on my memory stick when I get a new phone I will post them later.


I also have some pictures of Chiswick Business Park I did manage to recover. I will post them later too. It will probably thaw later which is always the down side of the beauty which snow can bring to a grey city landscape.

Wherever I hang my hat......

My alter ego, Scoop, aka Dick, has written an interesting article on the housing market, on his blog, here. I feel I am a prime example of the blinkered house seller who thinks the whole price crash will pass him by. Yes I put it on at a lumpy price, but I expected people to be willing to haggle, but in London that does not seem to be the case.

I started the blog 18 months ago as a chronicle of my house move, and unfortunately the whole experience has been blighted by the worldwide economic disaster which commenced with the collapse of the US subprime housing market, embraced the failure of Northern Rock and well, the rest is history.

I can relate to the fact offers are few and far between, and yes, I turned down an offer which I would jump at accepting now, but, hindsight, and all that....... so I still have a house to sell, and await the chance to negotiate a price with somebody willing to at least make an offer.

I am currently in Chicago, and it is interesting to get the natives view of the world. First they don't see a housing problem, and second, they don't see the world economic challenges as anything they have contributed to, but then the man on Main Street USA has always had a narrow view of the world.

I was surprised, however, that the rescue package put together by the smoking gun, George Bush, was initially rejected by the Senate and has only today been passed by the House of Representatives. I suspect they are afraid that they may become a third world country themselves if they are not careful. Their reluctance to protect the rank and file American citizens though was something I thought they would jump at the chance to do.

Still its all sorted now, lets just hope our Gordon has made sure we get a fair percentage of the $700bn to regenerate some interest in Chiswick real estate. Fingers crossed.

You want how much?

I have got the hump, and it has been caused by an e-mail which I have just received from Oxfam, concerning their charity shop pricing.

Oxfam have just announced plans to open a 'designer' outlet in Chiswick, West London, a well to do suburb whos' residents can probably manage without second hand clobber. This is really the thrust of my gripe.

Their existing shop sells designer gear donated by well meaning residents like Ant and Dec, and the nearly new shop owner who gives them his can't shift stock. They price it fairly high.

I have been in a few times and tried to haggle and negotiate for items only to be told that the price is the price, so I always walk out empty handed.

So I thought I would e-mail Oxfam and explain to them that they get most of their goods for free and that they are after all, a second hand shop, why will the staff not allow price reductions?

What did they say? Well, they have an obligation to the people who donate the items, and the people the charity supports to get the best price for the items, and so the price you see is the price they want. Furthermore, it would stress the 'old dears' who man the shops as volunteers if they were under pressure to negotiate.

Well as far as the first point is concerned I am sure any price they get is better than junking the stuff, or selling it on e-bay, and the people who donate have no expectation on price, and with regard the second point, the battle axes in the Chiswick branch are more than capable of holding their own when faced with people looking for a bargain.

They then go on to say that if it does not sell they reduce the price, but move the items to a different outlet, Hounslow, Feltham or Bedfont no doubt.

Wake up Oxfam, you are a glorified car boot sale punter, start acting like one!!!

Symphony for the Devil

Well the house position continues to be less than desirable, so i have taken the decision to move agents again, and have effectively sold my soul to the estate agent that is Foxtons.
Foxtons have a reputation for hard selling, and hard drinking, so lets hope the first will lead to celebrations involving the second. They have also suffered from bad press associated with some of their selling tactics, and were in dispute with one of the ex-Blue peter presenters over management fees for a flat she rented out.

All I know is that they are reputed to get the highest price possible for the properties they handle, and will hopefully tap into a market which has so far eluded Haarts and Hamptons ( Too many aitches there shurely....ed).

In the meantime we have started to view a few flats as we monitor whether the prices of these is falling. Chiswick Village is an area which has an abundance of property for sale. of its four 1930s red brick blocks, three border either the underground or overground, so we are favouring the fourth block which does not. There are 280 flats in all, so I am wary of substandard communal heating, higher than average service charges and the overall internal decor. I am currently canvasing on the local Chiswick web site to see if I can gain any intelligence.

Another of the blocks we were considering has just been identified with asbestos infestation, and each tenant has been handed a one-off bill for £25,000 for decontamination. i think we will give that one a miss for the moment.

So the search goes on, but first and foremost we need a buyer for SC. That said, it is a double rollover tomorrow!!

Tom Toms

I have never got round to embracing the sat nav culture. I guess its part of the macho 'I know where I am going' philosophy which the family would be delighted for me to ditch. Together we have discovered more back doubles, dead ends and dodgy areas than a sat nav could ever get me to drive through.

The Scouse House is not on some sat nav systems, which means we are often talking delivery or visiting drivers in, but I had to laugh last night, when, at about midnight it sounded like the Tardis had landed in Chis.

As I pulled back the curtains, there reversing down the road was a juggernaut, a huge juggernaut if that is not tautology. Silver Cres is just that, a crescent, and when combined with Thorneyhedge Road it will allow you to turn back on yourself along Chiswick High Road. If, therefore, that is what the lorry wanted to do, the sat nav was accurate in its directions. What it clearly did not take into account was the fact the hairpin bend at the top of the road is impossible to navigate in a lorry when a full compliment of residents vehicles are parked up.

How the trucker reversed all that way without damaging a car was a great testament to his driving skills. No sign of Billy Piper though.

Prosha

I am feeling very self righteous today, following a trip to my local Tesco. On this occasion I purchased all my fruit and veg loose and declined the use of the small plastic bags which the supermarkets place close to these items for separation.

The lady at the checkout seemed totally at ease with the approach and weighed and priced each selection as if I was in a street market. It saved me using eight or ten bags which I would have immediately thrown in the plastic recycling box, and herein lies the problem.

Hounslow Council have a plastic recycling facility in the car park of the local Sainsburys in Chiswick. As of 1st November, Sainsburys are going to manage this facility themselves. As a result, only plastic bottles will be able to be disposed of at this site. Packaging and plastic bags, film and food trays will have to go elsewhere or be thrown in with the landfill rubbish. The reason?

Plastic bottles have a resale value in the recycling value chain, plastic film and bags have a much smaller market and are consequently harder to dispose of. Sainsbury, therefore, are maximising their revenue from this new venture at the expense of the local residents and the Council.

I have talked about recycling before here and to their credit Hounslow are looking for an alternative site to place their wider plastics disposal facility, but it does make you wonder, as supermarkets create 90% of the plastic packaging, why they should be allowed to restrict the amount they collect for recycling.

Getting back to Tesco, I quite enjoy shopping in the store in Isleworth (pronounced 'i-sell-worth', rather than Tiger Woods home course with is pronounced 'i-el-worth') .As it serves the nearby Asian community it stocks loads of food from the Indian sub-continent and even food from further East, and it stocks it in bulk. Some great smells come from the curry section to which I am regularly drawn. The Sainsburys in Chiswick, by comparison, is much more Anglo-Saxon and is only just starting to stock selected Polish brands to satisfy the increase in demand from our Eastern European neighbours.

There has always been a close tie with the Poles in West London, particularly in Hammersmith where there is a large Polish cultural centre. Their strong catholic ethos also blends well with the high percentage of Irish residents in the area. I long had a Polish cleaner, well before they became de rigor. She was sourced from a work colleague who seemed to act as a gang boss for them. The girls would come to England for a year or so, doss with friends, and earn enough to go back and pay for their University or other higher education courses. These days my Crescent is more likely to play to the tune of au pairs, and builders, all working at a rate cheaper than their more traditional European competitors. Plus ca change.

....and its good night from him

I am reminded of a sketch by the Two Ronnies, when i saw them live at the palladium in the '70s. it was based on the 6 O'Clock news on a day when nothing happened.......Ronnie Barker as only he could, put the right inflection on the delivery when saying 'the worlds oldest man, Cecil Braithwaite' pause 'is still alive'. You had to be there!

Well today seems a bit like that as far as I am concerned. The only thing of interest was a press cutting i received from the Estate Agent, showing my house as listed in the London Evening Standard. They must be getting a bit frustrated with me at the moment, as usually they expect to sell houses almost as soon as they get to market. They then accept the commission fee and do diddly squat for the money.

I am a great believer of the theory that if the property sells on day 1, its too cheap, and one can always drop the price, but it's difficult to put the price up. So far my agents have printed and photocopied the brochures, then they had to print the glossy version, then put the ad in the local Chiswick paper and now the Standard.

We are still getting viewings so I am happy to sit and wait at the moment until the right offer comes along. For those who know the street, the bigger houses on the other side of the road have started to go for over £1m. Time will tell what mine will end up doing.

Cash in the Attic

My e-Bay rating has now tipped over the 300 mark.......my next star rating kicks in at 500 so I still have a way to go. Given though, that one in four people leave feedback I have shifted quite a bit of stuff. "Its to declutter", I tell everyone at home. "Why does the house still look cluttered then" they reply, cheeky gits.

I have sold an eclectic portfolio on e-Bay. The fire-escape from the Scouse House has to take pride of place, closely followed by a brand new hot water storage tank. Most of my sporting memorabilia has gone, together with many clothes I have grown out of ( or have they shrunk in the wash!). LP's, books, old electrical appliances, cartoons, and general bric-a-brac have all found new homes in the UK and beyond.

I have a very simple philosophy, it goes on e-Bay twice and if unsuccessful both times it is consigned to the car boot sale box. This weekend saw the first attempt to empty said box, and Chester Rugby Club was the preferred venue.

Our last attempt at car bootie was at Chiswick Community School, at which you would expect a high class of punter, but no, the Eastern European community from Hammersmith, and the Asian population of Hounslow seemed to make up the vast majority of 'bargain hunters', and boy did they want bargains. If you dare to ask more that 50p for a designer jacket retailing at £80 they looked at you as if you had two heads. Needless to say we did not have the greatest of days.

Sunday, however, restored my faith in this tremendously effective recycling process. We sold broken computers, unheard of LP's, dogeared paperbacks, magazines, bags, shoes, bangles, golf stuff, stamps, just about everything we took. The joy, however, was that people were prepared to accept the real value of the items and battle hard to negotiate a good price......that's the real attraction of the day.

Job done, we repaired to Bistro Jacques in Hope Street, Liverpool and got nicely mellow over Sunday lunch, paid for by a bunch of strangers.

Think I'll go and eat worms.....

Estate agents have an interesting reputation, don't they? Unloved, unpopular and unable to live up to their promises. I am reminded of a newspaper report from some years ago.......'a man walked into a high street outlet and shot dead the estate agent. The police are looking for a motive.' ......yeah right......
Well I interviewed five organisations in Chiswick. they all promised the world and the spread of prices which they quoted as reasonable was more than £100k apart. They work, of course, on comparibles, but this is what happens when there are none. So I set my own price, and appointed the outfit who sent the lady round. Well a philanderer would, wouldn't they?

So whats happened so far?
Nice glossy brochure, several promises of viewings which have not materialised, me hanging around for no reason, little communication unless I instigated it, and finally a few people have been shown round.

No offers yet but it looks like one of my viewers has offered on the house next door, which will be good, as it takes the opposition out of the frame, and it is a snip.