31 August
What a
miserable day it is out there today, and yet again it’s a Bank Holiday. As it
is I have a blazing headache anyway, so it’s a good job we hadn’t got any plans
for today apart from a nice quiet day at home reading and watching telly. For
the last week we have been enjoying Big
Blue Live on the BEEB. We love wildlife shows anyway but that one was
really special. Well worth viewing on catch-up if you missed it.
I’ve
mentioned the writer Ed James before but this morning he’s announced that his 7th
novel in the Scott Cullen series. I shall be looking forward to getting
my hands on it on me Kindle later this evening. He’s a good writer folks and
the Scott Cullen books are excellent. Of course he’s in Edinburgh, just like
Rebus but even though the genre is the same the writing is entirely different
and there’s no cross over in storylines.
The roughest
estate here in Dorktown is called Camphill. It was built originally to house
miners living in this area. Then the council built a load more houses too. Over
the years it was the estate where all the problem tenants were housed, and then
they wondered why there were so many problems in the area. Over the last few
years there’s been a regeneration of the estate with many house being demolished
and flats and so on built to replace them.
A large
number of these new properties are for sale, not for rent, which means that the
stock of council houses have been reduced even further, but what happened to
all the tenants that were moved out to make for the new builds? Well, the only
thing I can think of was that they were moved into other estates, several of
which have a bad reps anyway. So there I was looking at Facebook this morning
and I found that one of the remaining council houses in Camphill was totally
gutted by fire early this morning.
That means
that there will be two more houses less again; one for the family who lived in
the burned house, and two, the burned house which will need a lot of work doing
on it to bring it back to use. That means that every one on the waiting list
drops down two more places. I say waiting list because that is just what it is,
a list of people waiting to be housed by the council/housing association.
They of
course it’s not a waiting list because now everyone gets the same chance to bid
on a property and win it. I can see their point but this bidding system isn’t
quite so simple. There has to be a way of determining who gets offered the
house first. Like us in this place, we were top of the list for this one and
one in Bed’th but others we were as low as 6th or 7th. It
all depends on the applicant’s circumstances and the type of property available.
On telly
there have been stories of people waiting years and years for a place; so when
I bid on six places on the Thursday before a Bank Holiday, I was really
surprised to get a phone call on the Tuesday offering me a choice of two
places. I viewed this one on the Thursday and signed for it the same day. Of
course I’m not complaining about it. We both know we were very lucky to bid on
the right places at the right time. They were my first bids too.
Today’s
photo is from last weeks trip out …
One of a number of white flowers about the
place.
Today’s
funny …
Two
elderly ladies had been friends since their 30s. Now in their 80s, they still
got together a couple of times a week to play cards. One day they were playing
gin rummy and one of them said, "You know, we’ve been friends for many
years and, please don't get mad, but for the life of me, I can't remember your
name. Please tell me what it is."
Her
friend glared at her. She continued to glare and stare at her for at least
three minutes. Finally, she said, "How soon do you need to know?"
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