Miracles Do Happen!

 Thursday. 2.25 p.m. It's sunny and bright today, but it's not as it seems. It's actually been quite chilly. I went to the Thursday Morning Life Group as usual, and, although the car wasn't iced up, the inside of the windscreen was misty, and it took some time for me to clear it before I could drive out.

The new Lidl has opened on Oldbrook Boulevard. I must have mentioned that the old store had closed and the row of shops with a Tesco Express. There was an A.T.M. outside, which could be useful if you needed cash in a hurry. I went to look around earlier this afternoon and was surprised by how many cars were in the car park and inside the store it was heaving. I did buy a few things and used a self-service till to pay. You must keep hold of your receipt at the end because you need it to scan to exit the store.

Saturday. 9.20 a.m. It's relatively mild but overcast. Never mind. Get used to it.

As usual, I took a sleepy Alfie out onto the grass along Strudwick Drive around 6.45 this morning It has been made into something of a mud patch, a ploughed field or whatever you want to call it, created by the workmen who are doing the work in the community garden at Dexter House. I just don't like getting my shoes covered in thick mud, but it really can't be helped. It was dark, and it was difficult to see clearly, but as I was dealing with Alfie, I saw something moving in the greenery which grew alongside the wall of Dexter House. I looked again, and to my horror, I saw two rats fighting. It is not something I am keen on seeing or being near. Having had the rather horrible experience of the rats we had running about the house when Carol and I lived in Crownhill. (I think I have mentioned this saga in an earlier blog post.). I shouted at the rats, and they soon disappeared. But that wasn't the end of it. About two hours later, I sorted out the recycling and the various bags of rubbish which had to be taken out to the bin store. I opened the lid of the receptacle which takes the bags, and in amongst the bags were two more rats! I quickly put in the rubbish and slammed down the lid. 

Sunday. 8.25 a.m. No rats were seen when Alfie and I went out earlier this morning. It wasn't excessively cold, but I have a feeling it was slightly frosty, because the grass had a sort of glitter on it which is always a sign.

Wednesday. 10.20 a.m. It's sunny but chilly.

I've been to Lidl. I love it when you can get in and out quickly. The only problem is, finding what you want. I have a good idea where everything I want is, when I go to Sainsbury's. I have set up the  Lidl app on my phone, so I can scan and get points, a bit like Nectar, but you get instant treats, such as cakes and fruit, which was a surprise. If I have a gripe, it's the fact that, when you've done your shopping, taken it out to your car and unloaded it, you have to return the trolley to the parking space near the store. It's when you push your trolley into the parked trolleys, that you get your token back for your next trip. I imagine that this is so they don't have to employ someone to retrieve the trolleys (which they have at Sainsbury's. One less employee means they can cut prices. The staff work hard in Lidl, because they not only have to work on the tills, but stack shelves. Again, another way to have fewer staff and keep costs down.

Tuesday, 7:20 a.m. I've taken my usual walk with Alfie. We strolled along the grass by Strudwick Drive, which has become muddy due to the workmen driving vehicles for the community garden project. Their tyres have churned up the grass, creating this mess. I'm hoping things return to normal once they complete their work. 

I was at the point where I was about to pick up Alfie, to avoid him walking in the mud, and go back into Dexter House, when an electric scooter shot past. If I had taken probably another step or two, I would have been in a direct line with this scooter. There was no noise, nothing to warn me. The rider seemed totally ignorant of my presence. A bit of a shock. This is why I don't like these things.

I have mentioned elsewhere that I had changed my broadband provider. I'm now with Vodafone Fibre Broadband. I have managed to reset the various devices I have, so they are once again connected to broadband, but the password you have to enter to connect is long and complicated. The only device I  needed to set up was my Canon Pixma printer. I spent all yesterday trying to fathom out how to achieve this. I even bought a cable from Amazon, intending to use that to connect my MacBook to the printer, but I could not get it to work. As these things don't come with a full instruction manual, you have to do a search on the internet. I have the Canon print app on my iPad, so, as a final attempt, I thought I would try and see if that would work. It was relatively easy to put in the password, and, thankfully, it worked! These things are so frustrating. I even went to Argos to buy a black ink cartridge, as I was sure there wasn't sufficient ink in the cartridge that was in the printer. Everything fell into place, and I have been printing a document, which is some of my writing project, which I can now read and begin to make edits and amendments. I now need a suitable file to put the pages in.

So, the title of this blog post is pretty well accurate!

Now It Can Be Told- Part 2

After a year of our tenancy agreement we had to have our boiler checked. It is a legal requirement that landlords of rented property have the gas boiler checked to make sure it is safe. We got the visit from a plumber to do this job, and we got the certificate saying that the gas boiler was in good working order. We told him at this time that the central heating was not working properly, and we assumed that he would inform Copper Homes and they would get it repaired. Copper Homes were fully aware of the problems with such things as the hole in the kitchen ceiling, at the time we sold the house to them, it was understood that they would fix this problem, as well as doing general maintenance on the house, the guttering needed some repair as there was  constant running water when it rained and the downstairs toilet needed replacing. But we heard nothing from Copper, either in writing or by telephone, that they would deal with these problems.

Things proceeded for the next few months without any further problems, until we got a letter from an agency which stated that we must not pay our rent to Copper Homes any longer, and that we must pay it to them. We didn't think at the time that there was anything odd about this, and duly changed our Direct Debit to pay to this new rental agency. After a few weeks we got a letter from Copper Homes stating that we were not to pay our rent to this other rental agency. So, we accordingly changed the Direct Debit back to Copper. We discovered that one of the directors of the company had left Britain and gone to Australia. There was some sort of dispute with the rest of the board members, but we could never discover what this dispute was about. It was at this point that we became somewhat concerned as we got a letter telling us that the dispute was about who owned our house. Then the 'other' rental agency wrote (we presumed that it was him who used this agency to collect our rent.) to inform us that we must pay THEM and so we had to transfer the Direct Debit back to THEM. As you can imagine, we were getting somewhat annoyed having to keep going back to our bank and changing the Direct Debit details to and fro. 
Meanwhile, the condition of the house was deteriorating rapidly. We were getting more and more rats coming into the house and we could hear them scuttling around in the loft and within the cavity walls. They began to come into the kitchen and steal food, so we had to keep food in boxes and even inside the microwave to prevent it being eaten. Then the rats even ate through a plastic box in which we kept the dogs' food, on on one occasion the rats ate through a plastic chopping board. Also, the state of the kitchen sink was so bad, because any water that was drained away down the plughole, came out on the kitchen floor and eventually lead to the units rotting away. We were helped on this issue, though, as someone from our church kindly came to our aid and repaired the sink so that water would actually drain away outside and not on the floor. As I have also mentioned, the washing machine became inoperable as the rats gnawed through the plastic pipes on the back, so we had to take our laundry to a local company to have it washed. 
These rats got the attention of our two dogs, Poppy and Alfie. They could obviously hear sounds that we couldn't, and Alfie, in particular, would go into the kitchen and stare endlessly at the cupboard near the sink, as he must have been able to hear the high-pitched sound of the rats as they squeaked. Poppy wasn't so effected by the rats, but one presumes that she had some idea that there were intruders in the house.
Carol, meanwhile, decided that enough was enough and decided to ring Copper Homes to try and get them to sort out the various things that needed repairing, informing them, amongst other things, that the boiler wasn't working. By now we were approaching winter and the thought of having no heating was not something we wanted to have to do without. She got a lot of verbal abuse down the telephone from the Managing Director, Neil Brown. He said that the condition of the house was terrible (given to him by the plumber who came to do the checks on the central heating boiler.) and they weren't going to do any repairs until we cleaned the place. I think this may have been due to the state of the kitchen, as we were contending with rats running about and the hole in the ceiling was making the kitchen really dirty as bits of plaster and tile kept falling out of the hole and the ceiling in general was deteriorating very rapidly. If Neil Brown wanted to inspect the property, he was welcome to come to the house and see for himself, but he never came to the house once, even at the time the house was sold to Copper Homes, so I have no idea how he could make such comments when he hadn't seen the house. If they had repaired these things earlier, the condition of the house might not have got so bad.