Bribes From The Council??

I've just read on the 'Facebook Asda Langley Mill' site that residents in the new houses on North Street were offered £25 + another £25 if you brought a friend to a council meeting [held last week], to come up with ideas on how to spend Asda's bribe S106 money!

The council actually phoned them up and invited them with this incentive!!

Why are they more important than Bridge Street residents who are directly affected by Asda. Is this an example of council corruption or council stupidity?

If this is true - I think we're being short changed here and we're getting very peeved ...

It Has Begun

Oh I say! We’re being fenced in ... er … out.

Work started at the crack of dawn - relatively speaking, it was the crack of my dawn [8.00am] - on fencing the Heanor Haulage buildings off from Bridge Street.

This should be fun, the street is already very narrow, with hardly any opportunity to turn cars around and they’ve reduced the width by at least 2ft. Also come teatime, there are always about half a dozen cars parked on that side of the road, hmm, interesting.

OK, latest rumours:

1. The new fence will be up for 2 years.
2. Asda will be open by November 2010 [less of a rumour than you may think].
3. April 6th is start of Demolition.
4. Asda will be open by November 2011 [not my fault, I didn't start this rumour].
5. The buildings nearest to us are coming down first so footpath 53 can be sorted.
6. We are just going to have landscaping across from us until a decision is made on the bit of land where Heanor Haulage workshop and offices were going. 
7. They've got to move the nice clean, graffitiless boarding as it shouldn't be on the road.
8. Some people in a more nobby area of Langley Mill had been offered £25 to go to a council meeting to come up with ideas on how to spend Asda's bribe S106 money.

Facts:

1. The building across the top of the street is almost empty.
2. Car parking spaces will be at a premium.
3. It's still busy and very full on HH's back yard.
4. A man has just delivered a note saying that the asbestos roofs will be removed first, commencing 30th March.

Now where did I put my camera? I'm getting too old for all this multi-tasking:

1. Re-installing the system on granddaughters netbook after trying and failing to repair it - oh heck, how did that happen? it's the wrong system!!
2. Writing my blog.
3. Taking photo's.
4. Dying my hair - what time is it? Oh bugger, I need to rinse! ...

The Grand Opening And A Bit More Shaking

We went last week to open the caravan aka ‘the manor’, the usual hardy bunch were there getting their money’s worth. Most sensible folk wait until at least Easter before braving the weather while we twits suffered the sludge, the cold and the all pervasive damp that goes with sitting in a glorified tin shack in an old turnip field mid-March ... but we are anything but sensible.

I was relieved to go because as things were at home I was starting to think I was actually ill and I don't do ‘ill’ too well as I'm a bit mardy. I’d already written about the vibrations making me feel sick. Well this went on for over two weeks. Of course the hypochondriac in me had been checking on t'interweb for what diseases I may have been suffering from as I noticed that I was shaking on and off even when I wasn't at home - this was starting to scare me.

Having said that, it was much worse at home but the only bits of me that felt at all trembly were the bits that were touching the floor, chair, sofa, bed or even worse the bath; as any movement I made when laid in that made me feel like the whole thing was going to tip over and so completely spoilt my daily wallowing sessions with a good - but often wrinkled [dried on the radiator] - book.

It was almost [almost but not quite] impossible to use my beloved computer, it took me five separate sessions just to answer Ted's last comment. I deduced that even though the house was indeed shaking, other things with vibrations like my computer made it worse; I was tuned in to just about everything!

It was a bit of a vicious circle really, I knew the house shaking was making me sick so I needed to go out but I felt too ill to go anywhere - so didn't. Eventually the sickness wore off just leaving the trembling, I started timing the vibrations - one minute on and approximately ten seconds off.

One day last week my sanity was saved. The grumpy old man just happened to be sitting where I do my work and he looked up at me and said ‘I can feel it, tell me when it stops and starts.’

I told him ‘on.....off..on.....off’ and he agreed with me that there was a very subtle vibration. That was the only time he felt it apart from early on when it was much more noticeable - at last, proof that I wasn't either ill or completely round the twist. I did ask him if he was only humouring me as he could see I was getting more stressed each day because even though I no longer felt sick, I couldn't relax properly as the tingling made me feel tense and on edge all the time - and being bone idle, this will never do!

It was a bit like I was using one of those electric muscle stimulator doo-dah's you wire yourself up to that work your muscles without you actually having to do any exercise [my kind of exercise], I figured that with the amount of time I spent sat down with a tingling rear end that I'd probably end up with a size 10 bum to go nicely with my size, ahem 1* boobs - well I can hope can't I?

I'd also been experimenting by lying on the floor in different positions [and getting up fairly quickly when I heard the GOM coming so he didn't think I'd collapsed in a heap] and whizzing from room to room on my computer chair - trust me, I did have time for this as it was impossible for me to work with the travel sickness that the shaking had induced, so ended up putting in my two weeks holidays that I was owed [lucky coincidence] and had to use before April.

On the odd occasion when we did go out [after the sickness had passed], I noticed that wherever we went I felt the vibrations of anything and everything. Where I sat at a cafe for lunch [Calver] I felt every car and lorry go past. Then later at Peak Village, each shop we went into the heating set my feet tingling, I was starting to feel like some sort of chunky tuning fork - hmm ... or guitar string, I was twanging so much.

Thankfully a week away from the constant vibration seemed to cure me, the only thing that vibrates at the manor is the fridge and I hardly felt it. Since I've been back [Tuesday] I can still feel a slight tingle in my feet when Heanor Haulage are moving stuff on their back yard and again when I'm sat at my computer, but it no longer bothers me like it did.

Oh bugger! I spoke too soon, it's as bad as ever again [Saturday 27th March] I need another holiday ...

Another Snippet from Ted

Yet another Friday night effort from Ted, comment on 'Not Rumours After All':

My God Lady Grumpess, this is serious stuff, going to be far worse than anything HH have managed to conjure up. Rest assured my dear Grumpess you can rely on my support and active involvement should you embark on a campaign to KEEP OUR HEANOR HAULGE.

I thought your holiday sounded crap, and your poor Grumpy old man, inprisoned in a souped up garden shed with you and your family tribe, his only happy memories being the occasional p**s up some evenings, a sore rosette from riding those bloody bikes and a go down the slide in the Aquadrome. You sure know how to push the boat out your Ladyship.

I may analize your remarks and get back to you later.

In the mean time sleep tight my precious Grumpess and take care.


Oh dear Ted,

what's up? Won't anyone let you play with them on Friday nights that you find yourself desperate enough to read my blog? Hmm, you don't read it though, you skim it or you'd know we didn't stay with my family at Center Parcs or use bikes and there were certainly no p**s ups as you so eloquently put it.

Yep, worried about what we'll get instead of HH - better the devil you know blah blah, but no-one seems to know [or haven't said] what's going on that bit of land yet.

My friends will wonder why I'm allowing myself to rise far enough to take your bait yet again, they were a little put out by your last comment and knowing me and the GOM [unlike you do] couldn't quite understand what you were getting at. You see, you're not bothering me, I leave myself wide open on here and accept that not everyone will be happy about what I write. But I do take exception at your wildly inaccurate assumptions about my family being a tribe and the grumpy old man getting pi**ed.

Oh, by the way, you won't like the next two holidays I'm going on either - but I will blog about them if I want to.

Now, I'm sure no-one is holding a gun at your head forcing you to read what I write, so if you don't like it then read something else, either way, in future if you must comment at all then please save all your comments for me or push off, there's a good chap ...

A Bit Weird

For the past few days we've felt very minor vibrations [almost constantly throughout the day], at first it was only me but eventually the grumpy old man felt them too. This is fine when I'm walking around as it's barely discernible but this morning I was sat working. It was three hours of torture before I had to give in.

That's because the very subtle vibration precisely mimics the shakes I suffer when I go too long without food. So my brain assumes I'm hungry [I did have a snack upon this assumption the first time I felt it], my stomach tells my brain to get a grip because it's full, the brain tells the stomach to back off because it's in charge around here and if the stomach is full then it obviously needs emptying - the consequence is I feel sick - like travel sickness, I must be a bit odd.

I don't know where they're digging or what they're doing but I wish it would stop. I'd sooner have the full on oooooooeeerr vibration than this ...

Eastwood Dipsticks

I went with the grumpy old man to Eastwood at dinner time to buy some Birthday cards, I won't be going again in a hurry.

The zebra crossings in Eastwood are irritating at the best of times, there are four on one short stretch of road. Half the time people cross the road in-between and expect you to stop for them anyway.

Today as always the GOM was doing his usual courteous driving, ie slowing down to a crawl up to the crossing just in case someone 50ft away may arrive there before we do and want to cross the road - believe me, at the speed we're going they've got time.

Three men stepped onto the crossing from our right, they were eating their dinner, chatting and dawdling, even stopping right in front of us to continue their obviously riveting conversation.

Oh bugger, the GOM pipped his hooter, two of them shifted, whilst saluting us with the customary two fingers. The other one carried on acting like a twat, walking backwards and forwards in front of us - not I might add on the crossing at this time, in his enthusiasm for stupidity he'd stepped off it.

'Right, we're entitled to run him over now,' was my opinion, the GOM started edging forward and over the crossing where this tosser was still eating and dancing, he turned his back on us and gave the front of our car a hefty kick with the bottom of his foot, I'm not entirely certain he was sober as he nearly fell over - although he didn't drop his chips. I could see we'd got an audience and people were shaking their heads at him [the tosser, not my chauffeur].

We carried on and parked up and I did a few shops [and one of us went to the bookies]. The same three men were seen - by my GOM going from one bookies to another - to throw their litter in the middle of Eastwood 'market place' while they were talking loudly to one of their buddies in a car/tank, then they went and fetched bottles of lager. A little later when the bottles were emptied, they were thrown at a house.

We honestly weren't trying to follow them to see what they were up to, I'd sooner have given them a very wide berth as I hate confrontation - We're often reading where someone has been kicked to death simply for looking at someone and I wasn't keen on my GOM becoming another victim of this ugly society we've become. It's just that when they threw the bottles they were passing our car that we were going back to at the time [holding our breaths as we spotted them in case they decided to have another go at it as it's a bit distinctive colour-wise].

Why do people behave like this? It's getting more and more that I don't want to leave the house, although I don't particularly feel safe here as last night I could hear the group of about eight or so youths [13-15 year old] that had been drinking at the bottom of Bridge Street at 6.30, jumping up and down and shouting on the bridge steps a few hours later. The GOM was going to go and have a look as they were messing about for so long but I asked him not to as we'd already had a close enough shave with lunacy for one day ...