Tequila and the art of dry walling

I have just come across the happiest workforce in the world and in the most unlikely location.

I am not sure how they got to that particular point in time but theirs must have been a very interesting journey indeed.

I am talking about my time spent today in the company of the Mexican builders of East Hull.

They were working on a refurbishment of a post war built terraced house on one of the outer rim Local Authority Estates. I could hear something like a party going on as I pulled up in the car. Latin beats and rhythms blasted out of the open front door, not just a tape or CD recording but an actual live broadcast from the Old Country interspersed with what definitely sounded like commercial adverts and chat show phone-ins.

I poked my head into the hallway.

A cacophony of noises covering the majority of building trades emanated from the kitchen beyond.

Power tools, hammering, pipe bending, sawing, tea making and sweeping up.

I was a bit reluctant to intrude on the hive of activity but was spotted by one of the Mexican workers who welcomed me in, as though showing me to a table in a South American themed eatery. In between passages of Spanish dialect talk radio the six members of the workforce sang along, in tune and word perfect to the ballads and standards.

There was a certain melancholy in their sonorous voices, no doubt brought on by the cold and damp November weather in the North of England and a fleeting, passing recollection of their native land, and its contrast of hot and dry climate.

I felt like I was partaking in a sort of fluid dance through the house in evading the large sheets of dusty plasterboard which were brought in from a delivery van and then noisily fixed onto the existing papered ceilings.

My route from room to room was also impeded by the fact that the house had not been cleared of furniture and belongings.

The living room was full of the personal effects of the previous occupiers under a light but all penetrating covering of dust. It must have been considerably more cluttered had not the three piece suite been ejected onto the front lawn along with amongst other detritus of everyday life, a ladies sheer black brassiere. It was a bit of a surreal sight.

I fell out of the back door after two of the Mexicans had manhandled the pine kitchen table away from its former barricading position. The yard was also littered with the remains of goods and chattels, a drastically leaning storage shed and a burnt out Wendy House.

Work continued and I had to squeeze up the staircase around stored piles of building materials. Brushing up against the stairwell wall had left, as I looked back from the landing, a sweeping mark and then I realised that this was due to the transfer of the residues from wall to the back of my suit jacket. I was totally plastered in the actual meaning of that otherwise much misused term.

There was more mayhem in the first floor rooms with furniture including bunk beds, loose chairs, mounds of linen (dirty) and yet more building materials and tools.

All of the upstairs windows were wide open and I was glad of that as otherwise the atmosphere would have been humid, stifling and choking. I thought for a moment that perhaps the Mexicans lived and slept on site but that would not have been possible in the cramped space of the otherwise decent sized house.

The music and happiness continued amongst the men, no doubt contributing to the lightning fast progress of the renovations and refurbishments. I had been in a good many properties where the workers were just plain grumpy, disillusioned and simply running down the clock until knocking off time.

Before I realised about 45 minutes had elapsed. Such was the infectious ambience that I was reluctant to leave and did entertain the thought of rolling up my sleeves and joining in. I was after all from the South originally, well Aylesbury.

The actual standard of work was, to be frank, not very good and I would have a lot to write about in my report for the prospective purchaser. To give the Mexicans the benefit of the doubt I had turned up in the middle of the project and there was a very good possibility that they would turn things around in a few days. I would have to recommend a re-inspection when the works had been completed and indeed looked forward to a further visit although the builders will, in reality, have been long gone to the next job.

For the rest of the day I found myself humming a medley of James Last-esque South of the Border melodies and with a definite lightness in spirit and foot.

I like to think that my Mexicans were in fact a full Mariachi Band just filling in between a busy programme of evening and weekend bookings. That made me smile and tap my feet. "Ole`".

Agony Aunt and the Built Environment

Dear One Last Soul,

I am thinking about building my own house. I like the idea of it but actually have very little information on the practicalities and costs. My own grand design is for a low energy and high tech building, quite stylish, you know the sort, a bit cubist with lots of open plan space and glazed areas. Something in a timber frame would be nice. I have found a bit of land, well, actually I am quite happy to just bulldoze my existing, old and energy sapping dwelling and start from scratch. Can you help?

Well, here goes.

Confirm that the land is developable.
Draw up a plan of that dream house to comply with Regulations
Get Planning Permission
Initial Costs £14,189,60. (includes Architects fees of £11,100)

Make sure that you have enough funds for the job
Get Insurance and Warranties
Arrange temporary accommodation. Possibly with Mother in Law.
Setting Up Costs of £4978.93 plus ongoing Mortgage liabilities dependant on loan amount

Ready to get started on Stage 1- out of the ground
Deposit on timber frame
Hire some big yellow skips
Demolish old house, make good the site
Excavate for foundations
Pour concrete.
Drainage arrangements
Ground floor construction
Eco infrastructure for rainwater harvesting
Time costs for explaining to neighbours what it is all about
Costs £55,019.70

Stage 2- Schedule to delivery and assembling of the timber frame house kit.
Scaffold and Crane Hire
Reimburse neighbours for damaged fence from large lorry mounted crane
Labour
Ample tea and biscuits
Cost £29,681.87

Stage 3-getting wind and watertight
Roof covering, rainwater fittings, windows, doors, Solar Panels, external claddings
Tarpaulins just in case of rain
Wellies and Macintoshes
Cost £59,107.90

Stage 4-Getting the inside sorted
Plastering
Joinery
Services in place
Staircase
Upper floors
Home automation system
First Aid Kit for minor injuries
Cost £69,331.31

Stage 5- best bits
Finalise all services and fittings
Kitchen fit out 
Bathroom installation
Tiling
Decoration
Cleaning and clearance of site debris
Landscaping
Bottle of Champagne
Cat flap
Invite Mother in law to housewarming and buy large bunch of flowers
Think about asking the neighbours around as a peace offering
Cost £24,398.75

Time elapsed, if to schedule ,from start to moving in, 20 weeks (optimistic)

Total Cost to build £256,708,06 including VAT (Land already owned in this example)

Net Build Cost therefore £205,366.45

Size of house created, 205m2 (2206 sq ft)

Cost per m2 £1252 of gross cost (£116 sqft)

Value of house when completed?.......in the eye of the beholder (Depends on location)

This represents very much the highest specification for a modern house. If you are not
feeling up to the challenge Barratt Homes can do it for £500 m2 but then again as my
old man says "you get what you pay for".

The Smashing Pumpkins

Halloween must be a very confusing time for children in particular and especially so this year with a renewed onslaught by commercial interests to use the revenue from spooky related items as another attempt to jump start the economy.

I can sympathise with the very excited Tots (and adults) when informed that Halloween actually falls on a school night. How cruel is that?

I expect any moment now a directive from the ruling party that those failing to purchase flashing deelyboppers, plasticky face masks and fang shaped jelly sweets  may risk having their benefit docked.

It is after all patriotic to take part in Halloween.

My local Tesco Express has been stocking everthing scary for weeks. I use the term scary to describe the ultra high sugar and chemical preservative content of the cocktail of things found in a typical goody bag.

The season presents an ideal opportunity for sweet manufacturers to offload their poorest selling lines by simply bagging them up as vampire snacks, witches vittels, frankensteins chewies or werewolf off-cuts. I will however purchase a large bag of miniature chocolate bars to keep by the front door in the event of callers .

There has been disappointment on my part from a very poor take up of such treats in the last couple of years. It is important to make an effort as any perceived lack of enthusiasm will surely result in an egging attack on the front of the house on the forthcoming mischief night.

Pumpkins, a poor mans savoury melon, have had a major resurgence.

My daughter, Alice found a real pumpkin patch just outside York and indulged in a late season Pick Your Own. I have never come across that before.

The celebrity cooks are thinking up wonderful treats involving members of the gourd and squash families. I thought the recipe for a fleshy pumpkin soup, infused with ginger and sherry was interesting. I followed the process faithfully. Hand scoop out and dispose of the seeds. Wash hands,optional,  then claw out the insides setting aside in a heavy metal skillet. On low heat cook the flesh with butter. Add 1 pint of chicken stock, stir in previously prepared cooked onion and garlic. Season with salt and pepper. Find at the bottom of the food cupboard a brittle stick of cinnamon devoid of any flavour. Empty all or any Schwarz herb or spice jars from the top of the food cupboard.  Boil down the mixture to a firmish but not stiff texture. Remove from the heat. Use a hand blender to produce a smooth mix. The crowning glory of the recipe is in its serving inside the shell. Unfortunately, my son had, during my cooking endeavours, cut out two eyes, a cartilage free nose hole and a  wide toothy grin. My eagerness to serve up the soup was dashed by the sight of the rich, orangey and  creamy mixture extruding out of the orifices of the pumpkin and all over the kitchen to a combination of morbid amusement and horror of the hungry onlookers. The whole effect was very dramatic and in some way I may have implied that the whole performance had been intentional as part of the evenings entertainment. For Halloween tea we ended up eating '1000 year old zombie eggs in blood on an upturned rustic gravestone'. Apparently, they are available in 57 varieties.

One for the road, plus 2,199,999.

The end of the line, a dead end, you only go to Hull if you have to.......heard it before, heard it today and those who have never visited the great City will continue to say it in the coming years.

Yet, for the estimated 2,200,000 immigrants who passed through Hull on the way to settlement in the United States, Canada and South Africa in the mid to late 19th Century it marked the beginning of the next stage of their arduous journey to find safety from persecution and to earn a living.

Arrival in the port will have brought a graphic realisation that their flight was progressing, particularly after a hellish three to four days of passage across the volatile North Sea from the Baltic Ports. At last, some firm soil under their feet and the prospect of a rapid train transfer across the country to the mass transit hub of Liverpool.

There had been a negligible trickle of migrants, around 1000 a year in the early part of the 19th century.

Risking sickness or a perishing at sea these early arrivals mainly settled in the emerging Industrial centres of England and quickly established communities in York, Leeds and Manchester. By the 1840's the transport of emigrants from Norway, Sweden and North Germany was big business for steamship companies who switched fully to passenger cargo or maintained a mix of goods and people.

The Wilson Line, a Hull based company, held a virtual monopoly of the routes. The generation of income from frequent crossings was tremendous but at the cost of quality and humane standards. This drew the attention of the Hull Board of Health, who had a running battle with the Wilson Line over poor and unacceptable standards of their passenger vessels. The Steamship Argo was likened to a little better than a cattle ship. Human excrement running down and sticking to the side of the superstructure was cited.

The inhumane conditions threatened not only the health and welfare of the poor transportees but also the wider City population.When ships arrivals did not coincide with the running times for ongoing trains the squalid conditions on board persisted with, largely, only the male emigrants allowed to venture out into the city. Outbreaks of Cholera in most of the European Ports demanded immediate action to prevent an epidemic amongst the local population. The Hull Sanitary Authority was formed in 1851, an early Quango, with responsibility for the wider urban area and the Port.

Main embarcation points in the central and eastern docks included the Steam Packet Wharf in the Humber Dock Basin or the Victoria Dock. The Minerva Hotel on the Dock Basin Quay served as offices for emigrant agents and became established as the hub of the operation. The threat to Health was serious and after 1866 the arrivees at Victoria Dock were not allowed to cross the town on foot and were kettled onto trains on the North Eastern Railway. Those arriving at the Dock Basin were invariably held on board. This was regarded as a safer option, particularly as confused and disorientated european migrants were at significant risk of exploitation by the inevitable presence of chancers and racketeers in the narrow dockside streets.

A major improvement and recognition of the vast human traffic through Hull was the construction, in 1871, of an Immigrant Waiting Room and allocation of a transit platform just on the southern edge of Paragon Station with a frontage to Anlaby Road. This building still survives as a Bar and Social Club for Hull City football supporters.

The building, a long, narrow, low slung brick and slate structure had actual but limited facilities for the comfort and convenience of immigrants. The prospect of a first wash, secure toilet and permanent landside shelter was well overdue.

From the building ticket agents could ply their business in a controlled environment against criminal activity. Once ashore, most passengers were despatched on the next leg of their journey within 24 hours. Those delayed for whatever reason and requiring lodgings had a limited choice evidently a Directive from the authorities to discourage even temporary settlement.

Twenty emigrant lodging houses were officially licenced in 1871. These were little more than dormitories accommodating between 20 and 80 people at a time.

The Waiting Room had to be extended within ten years. Arrivals continued to increase up to 1885 and the Hull and Barnsley Railway Company jumped in to capitalise on the trade with a second emigrant platform at their new Alexandra Dock development. The purpose built complex could take the largest of steamships and the prompt transfer of passengers to trains of 17 carriages, the last four being exclusively for baggage. The long trains had priority on the line with a monday morning departure for the 4 hour journey to Liverpool, the gateway to the United States and Canada.

The exodus from Europe was persistent and in 1904 the Wilson Line leased a separate landing station at Island Wharf at the Basin mouth being the fourth such facility across the waterfront. The income from this trade, for the Wilson Line, had made it the largest privately owned shipping line in the world. There was another ten years of peak profits from the transmigration business before the outbreak of the First World War ended the trade overnight.

Hull was the natural stepping stone for those escaping to a better percieved life in the west. Amongst the 2.2 million passing through was a documented, but estimated, 500,000 european Jews and up to 70,000 of Russian and Polish origin. Large numbers of Swedish, Norwegian and Danish migrants, mainly of hardy farming stock , were customers of The Wilson Line for resettlement in North America.

The Island Wharf has a permanent commemorative statue to the plight of the immigrants with a family sat amongst suitcases containing their worldly belongings , looking a bit apprehensive about what lies ahead.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Northern_European_Family_-_geograph.org.uk_-_540649.jpg

Busted

It always leads to utter confusion in our house.

All through yesterday there was a frequent interrogation as to "what actually is the real time?".

The cause of this uncertainty was the marking of the end of British Summer Time and the changing of the clocks.

We have the same argument every year as to whether it is a case of the putting them forward or adjusting them back. This is in spite of the mantra learned from childhood alongside the likes of "Every Good Boy Deserves Food", "Richard Of York Gave Battle in Vain", "Thirty Days has, etc, etc" of spring forward and fall back for the seasons of the change in the hour.

We have of course had a few near disasters of time keeping in the family and that is why just one of our number is entrusted to physically alter all of the timepieces in the house.

In the past everyone and I suspect even the family pets, took it upon themselves to carry out this task resulting in not just the loss of gain of one hour dependant upon the season but multiple hours.

To confuse the issue many of the new appliances and gadgets in the house automatically account for the change and as if by magic, overnight, do it themselves.

Many of those I have spoken to on the subject of this impromptu time travel just go to bed early on the saturday night and sleep through in a state of oblivion rather than stress out as I do.

I was determined that this year would be ordered and civilised and so I calculated when to set the alarm to arise at my normal 6am sunday start. A smart phone is so called because it does a lot of smart things without being asked. The outcome was that I leapt out of bed, ready to complete a whole lot of outstanding paperwork but at the unearthly hour of 5am.

It took a random sampling of the mantel clock, digital watch, cooker display and the LCD on the front of the DVD player to realise that I was up and about under, frankly, bogus pretences.

Consequently, the first day after the end of BST always seems to be inexplicably long, tiring and with the early onset of dusk, wholly demoralising.

I was therefore relieved to get back to some semblance of normal with today being a working day.

A bit stupified from lack of sleep in the preceeding 24 hours I got into the car only to see that I was horribly late for my first meeting at the office. Traffic was fairly normal even at that peak rush hour time but I put that down to it being school half term.

I rang ahead to announce my impending late arrival but the meeting must have already started as no-one could find time to answer.

Surprisingly I could get parked easily in front of the office, a first.

Unusually my colleagues had locked themselves in and must have been discussing issues in a darkened room as the blinds were still drawn.

I burst in through the inner door hoping , by diversionary tactics, to produce a laugh at my tardiness. The office was empty and quiet.

Had I got the wrong venue after all, I thought to myself.

Switching on my desk top PC I noticed the time. It was a good hour behind that displayed on the dashboard in my car. It all then became abundantly clear that once again I had failed to adjust that particular keeper of time. I was not so much angry at my own oversight as disapointed in the engineering credentials of Volkswagen in not having a smart clock unless of course they just excluded that item of specification for the UK market, out of a unique sense of Germanic humour.

Not the best pear I've had the pleasure of.

I have discovered the further perils of gardening.

Not that I have much to tend to after the recent house move into the City.

At the last place the back garden was 30 metres long, mainly to lawn with a few planted borders and trees. It took a lot of work to keep on top of the basic tasks and not having enough time due to earning a living did mean that I inevitably got a bit behind. The consequence being a scruffy and unruly wilderness. I enjoyed the winter snow cover because it made my garden look as good as those well tended ones in the road.

The opportunity to catch up was therefore over the occasional, time and energy permitting, long weekend and it was a period of concentrated work to trim the long hedge boundary, cut the grass and sculpt the edges , pull out the weedy growth from under the mini-orchard, tidy up the herbaceous borders and then take the accumulated green waste in a series of trips to the Civic Amenity Site on the far side of town.

There was no sitting back with a chilled beer and a cornish pasty upon completion of this work because the front of the house called out for the same attention.

This added another 40 metre run of high privet and a few screening shrubs just inside the boundary wall.

A large garden can be as much a source of stress as a pleasant place to try to relax and enjoy the results of your labours.

In the course of tending to that small suburban estate I self inflicted a few nasty wounds through enthusiastic but mainly mis-use of the hedge trimmer, lawn mower, hosepipe and pressure washer amongst the collection of power tools at my disposal. I was equally gung-ho with the traditional hand tools of sharp spade, fork, secateurs, edging tool, shears, trowel, hoe and rake. I still carry the scars on hands, legs and latterly my upper right side temple from the hazardous tanglings with these tools. The most recent seemingly an attempt to trim my sideburns with the electric hedge trimmer.

You would think therefore that moving to an inner city house with no meaningful garden land would increase my average life expectancy.

I have found that assumption to be flawed.

The forecourt faces north and so has had very little suitability to grow and sustain anything living apart from those hardy and indestructible leylandii's. They are horribly boring plants as well as contributing to many disputes between otherwise reasonable and peacefully co-existent neighbours.

My son has cleared the wooded thicket in a scorched earth approach and as a consequence I have i) a blank canvas and ii) very little exposure to dangers and perils. Sweet.

The back of the house is really just an extension to the shared Service Road with our bit being marked out in that ubiquitous block paving in a herringbone pattern (is there any other?) and a few flush mounted pin kerbs.

Sounds fairly innocuous and again of low peril.

Well, just beyond the bisecting road is a small recess of ground that apparently falls within the red line of my Title Deed Plan. It has a large and as yet unidentified species of weeping tree but severely choked by ivy and other parasitic growths.

Against my better judgement and just to conform to the male stereotype for stupidity when faced with danger I waded, just today, into the wilderness to try to save the tree from the stifling presence of the ivy and to clear out the recess which had become a bit of a litter and dead leaf trap in the eddying currents of the cul de sac.

It was a breezy day, apparently the starter on the forthcoming menu of the biggest storm front to hit the UK in years.

In a quiet moment between the gusts of wind and the usual inner city traffic noise I paused to catch my breath. I became aware of a dull thud of something passing close to my head and then making a "splat" sound onto the tarmac road. I could have been mistaken. It could have as easily been a blood vessel in my ageing brain or a reaction to the strain of work by the aforementioned scar tissue on my temple.

Within a minute or so of having resumed activity the same happened again but even closer.

A bow wave of disturbed air and a faint whiff of fruit invaded my personal space. It was a near miss. Not in the category of an aircraft event but a warning that the next incidence of the same action would involve injury for sure.

Retreating back onto the block paving some 15 metres away and towards the shelter of the house I stood still and waited. With every increase in the blustery wind came the thud, thud of more falling debris. The neighbours caravan took a direct hit and the object bounced off the roof so as to roll and land at my feet even at what I had considered as a safe distance from attack.

It was a large pear.

My experience of a pear tree was based on one that we had planted at the old house to celebrate the birth of one of our children. That sapling had struggled to get beyond a few feet high and at best gave forth, unwillingly, one or two rock hard fruits every fifth year.

The now evident source of the projectiles was a huge gangly monster of a growth adjacent to the lock up garages of the adjoining residential street. I had of course noticed and registered it as a tree but just not a fruiting one.

Now tuned into the impending hazard of being concussed or worse by solid, and to my inquisitive disgust, wholly inedible, pears I decided to take appropriate action.

My new neighbours must have been much amused by the sight of the new kid on the block wearing a builders hard hat, padded shouldered jacket, knee pads and steel toe capped wellies just to cut back a bit of stray foliage.

Storm Front

Apparently there is a big storm front approaching the UK.

It is difficult to gauge what the Meteorological Office mean by an advanced warning of this type.

Is it code-speak for "uh-oh the end of the world is coming" or just a bit of a hype so that if anything lesser but still massive comes in from the Atlantic then we have been placed on alert.

There is in fact, and as humankind well know through the millennia, very little we can actually do against the forces of nature even if forewarned if not able to be forearmed. King Canute learned the hard way about that.

I have however given an appropriate weighting to the level of public hazard being indicated.

I live almost in the top of the trees, that being explained by the fact that the house is three storey and overlooks a public park.

To the front are some sizeable horse chestnut trees, now considerably lighter in their canopies after having been given a right battering by the local children in search of the crop of conkers and through the natural shedding of the leaf cover .The bedroom window is at middle branch level and I am regularly eye to eye with the resident population of grey squirrels who skip about, always busy and seemingly themselves making preparations for some apocalyptic event, or just hibernation season. One squirrel recently verbally abused me in a manner that both shocked and surprised me. Shocked because I do not recall ever having heard the creatures make a noise before and surprised because I don't think we had met before.

Having quite recently moved into the house and not inheriting any curtains or blinds (bought a sofa and two armchairs instead) there is a fascinating play of shadows on the bedroom wall by the light of the flickeringly faulty streetlamp during the night. Framed in the darkness there is the ebb and flow in the projected size of the boughs of the nearest chestnut tree. If awakened I use the silhouetted show as a sort of counting sheep exercise to try to drop off again. It can be quite effective as a relaxation technique but I am fearful of the terrifying manifestation of a giant squirrel shape looming up as one of their number makes their way home after a night out getting nuts or whatever.

In our few weeks in residence we have had some windy times but with the house being in a staggered echelon of similar properties and orientated north to south we have not yet borne the brunt of any gales or strong breezes.

Modern double glazing is also pretty good at excluding the sound of a storm and it is necessary to actually open a window and lean out to get any inkling of how violent the weather system is. There is a tree at the back of the house on what is our land and that may not fare as well in cyclonic conditions. It is of a weeping variety and with quite a bit of elasticity in its upper parts so that in just a stiff breeze it gives the impression of imminent collapse and failure. It also has no benefit of shelter from the prevailing westerly's and so may be an interesting indicator of the severity of the predicted storm.

Otherwise, I have ensured that the fridge is full and I have a bit of catch-up to do on DVD's and reading if best advised to stay put and sit out the bad weather. This is all well and good if, of course, the power supply remains unaffected so as back up I did panic buy some candles and stock up on torch batteries. I appeared to be the only person of a nervous disposition down at the local stores and stocking up for the event. The local population showed no urgency in arranging builders to check that their chimney pots and vulnerable masonry were well bedded in. I did not note anyone acting as advised to secure garden furniture and loose fence panels. The large DIY outlet did not have a ready supply of sandbags in case of tidal surge but did prominently display a vast array of fireworks.

I suppose that if we are in fact saved from the impending Armageddon it will be more than appropriate to blow something up in celebration.