Be Excellent To Each Other

As a kid, I only ever took home the multi-coloured rubbers from National Trust properties.

Potentially NSFW

Like this?

No.
There's always a silhouette of the house or an oak leaf too.

I'm never buying a National Trust rubber again! #boycott.

Yes, I can see his front door from our new place.

Yes one street away

How likely are you to bump into a friend at a music festival?

Stupid Question. Surely it depends on whether you're standing next to them and how much pressure there is from the surrounding crowd.

I went to see Beyonce the other week with the GF and I literally saw three people I know there, no prior arrangement to meet or anything it was weird.

I randomly bumped into Kern in the middle of London once.

I wouldn't know it if I had.

I think the biggest one of those I've had, is when I was child. We lived in a block of flats in London, and had gone to Scotland for 2 weeks in the summer holiday, we spent the first week with my Grandpa in Greenock, and then were travelling up to Fort William for another week up there. On the way there, we stopped off at some random pretty location we'd noticed on the way (I can't remember where it was), there were about half a dozen cars parked up, and getting in to one of them was a family that lived 3 doors down from us on the same floor of the flats I lived in. They were ending their holiday and were driving back from Inverness and heading back to London and had also stopped for a break to look at whatever it was my parents thought was worth looking at (I think a ruined castle or some such). Neither family knew the other was in Scotland, and neither had any plans to stop there before they pulled over.

I saw Craster once in London at a random tube station

Most of my friends have shit taste in music, so not likely.

Oddly enough, there have been two occasions when I’ve met people I know, unexpectedly.

The first was when Mrs.W and i were on our honeymoon on the Isle of Man (we were really skint in those days, so nowhere exotic for us). We were staying in Douglas, but went on a sight seeing tour one evening and stopped for a stroll at Port Erin. It was like a ghost town, the Main Street was devoid of people except one lady in the distance, walking toward us. When we got closer, I recognised that it was my team leader from my office. She was also on leave and had family in the town.

The second was when I was working on an Open Learning Development job, and I used to travel to each of our eight area offices dotted around the north west, once per month, to bang the drum for OL. The furthest north was Workington , in Cumbria, and I used to stay overnight at my aunt’s gaff in Grasmere in the way up there. On one occasion I stopped at Cockermouth, on my way to Workington, to buy a sarny for lunch, and as I was looking for a butty shop I ran into a old friend of mine I’d known from my Manchester hippy days, who I’d lost touch with after he went to live in a crofter’s cottage on a Scottish Island. Unlike today, with Facebook, email, etc. it was easy to lose track of people unless they wrote to you, or phoned occasionally. I hadn’t seen or heard of this guy for maybe 20 years, and here he was in Cockermouth, teaching at a local college. The chances if us meeting must have been minuscule, and we have kept in touch ever since, and he now lives back in Manchester, about a mile from me.

I was in Langkawi a month ago, an island off NW Malaysia. It's hot there, so I sat about, delaying going for lunch. Eventually I decided that now was a good time and wandered out. Decided to turn right down the main street rather than left, on a whim, and on the opposite side of the road, walking along, so a few minutes either way and I would have missed him, is a bloke I know. My brain ran its recognition routine, which took a moment, so I had time to think "someone from the hostel".

Nope, a bloke I used to work with in London, sat opposite for the best part of the 10 years I was there. He was there for just a couple of days, scoping it out as a potential retirement spot.

The sheer luck of it was somewhat spoiled by my bumping into him twice more over the next 24 hours, showing we were in a small town, but still.

I bumped into a female colleague in Aberystwyth once.

I was away with my Ill fated girl friend at the time and I think we'd had an argument so I was walking alone by the pier. Because of how low I was feeling and how shitty the situation was, the colleague was the most beautiful lady I'd ever set eyes on.

We had a quick chat, exchanged pleasantries and went our separate ways.

She didn't look the same when we returned to work the next week. Oh well.. Easy come, easy go.

I went to the safari park today and took about 4 pictures. This was one of them... I think it's quite good!

I think we’ve also met him!!

That's brilliant!

If you heard me say "what else could go wrong? ha ha ha" re: the house over the weekend, the answer came swift. And it is "lots".

Specifically, in the region of six thousand lots.

Yikes, what have you found?

The whole central heating system needs to be replaced - new radiators, new pipework, new boiler.

Ouch

The guy said it's the worst system he's seen in 45 years of doing the job.

awwwww fuck, I'm so sorry

Is there no chance of challenging the estate agent as a possible mis-selling? Not fit for purpose and all that?

oh bollocks

Unfortunately when buying a house in England you have no ground to recourse with issues like this. "Caveat Emptor" and whatnot.

Balls.

Probably not. It's our own fault for not having a big in depth survey basically.

Hmmm, not convinced there can never be any recourse.

I’d suggest you look at the surveyors report(s) and see if they’ve done their job properly, whether the sols have done their job properly and so on.

I will concede to your superior knowledge on the matter, however, in my experience once you've exchanged contracts the seller was off the hook.

The person conducting the survey etc. would be responsible for any issues (as they deemed it was fit etc).

We (stupidly) didn't have a survey done, but tbh the full extent of this has only arisen because our gas man ripped up floorboards to look at pipework etc. so I'm not convinced even the most in depth of surveys would have picked that up.

Structural survey would've picked it up, but you wouldn't have had one of those done unless the homebuyer report flagged up a load of issues. And if it did you probably would've decided to walk away.

Oh well, irrelevant now really as we were stupid and didn't and here we are.

You left your toothpaste here btw. I've been meaning to message you for a week.

I wondered where that went! My teeth are a bit minging now tbf.

(It's ok we had a spare)

Our structural survey was bloody useless. Could really do with the £1200 to spend on any one of the multitude of things it didn't find.

Can't you get some sort of financial recourse from the surveyor, Bik? I thought that was (part of) the point of them?

I expect the report will be filled with all sorts of caveats.

The homebuyer usually is (couldn't find any damp in the floors, but didn't have the floorboards up so can't confirm), but the structural should be much more in-depth.

I've never even seen a structural report I don't think, to the google-a-tron!

A friend of ours moved into their house and the previous owner, before she moved out, had cut a load of the cables that ran through the house making it a potential death trap. Luckily my friends cousin (who is an electrician) found out and made everything safe but the previous owner had done a right number on it.

She'd also left bags of rubbish all around the house including, what we suspect, were animal remains.

My friend looked into it but ultimately there was nothing she could do and just had to clear it all up herself. I'm not sure how much she looked into it but there you go.

According to the neighbours, the lady who lived there was a right nasty piece of work. Amongst other things, she'd made her young child stand in the garden in his underwear in the freezing cold as some sort of punishment.

HIPs were such a bloody good idea

Yes.

In California (a housing market I now have a lot of second-hand information about, courtesy of friends and colleagues) all surveys are done by the seller before the house is listed. When you show up to the open house, there's an information pack that will include a detailed survey (with the name of the surveying company attached -- you can, of course, verify it's genuine.)

You also don't have purchasing chains. You typically list your house for sale after already buying your new place. Finance for owning two places at once is covered by a short-term bridging loan. Also: all offers are binding -- and accompanied by a hefty deposit -- so gazumping/undering and sales falling through due to general shitness are far rarer. Finally: buyers have realtors, who do all the work of searching the local market for you, so you don't have to register your details with a dozen local estate agents. Buyer's realtor's fees are paid by the sellers. Finally: no stamp duty (but you might have to pay capital gains tax on your primary residence instead.)

On the other hand, prices are insane even by London standards.

Yeah, you don't get a whole heap of definite.

I was in London today for the RAF 100 flypast which was a great spectacle.
The atmosphere was superb, and there were rounds of applause for the BBMF, the Typhoons and the Red Arrows.
Sadly it was a bit dark for great photos.

Not that sadly. This is the first day London hasn't been a wasteland hellscape in weeks.

A fair point. It's been toasty enough in the Midlands without having to deal with millions of other people and the tube.