Messymascot's faith in humanity and ginger safe haven

[anjelikaferrett]

Just been around to my neighbours for a shower. Not sure whether I've mentioned this before but my neighbours are also my landlords. He actually developed and built the close I live in which is on the edge of the village. He still owns quite a few of the properties himself and his daughter lives over the road from me and his son next door but one. His god daughter (the one who made me the veggie lasagne) lives next door. It's also probably a good time to give you a bit of an insight into their personalities. She is just gorgeous. Warm hearted, very caring and easy going. He is a bit more complex. Socially I get on very well with him and he is incredibly generous with his time as you can tell from my posting. He is also as rich as Creosus. lol. But to counter that he is also an absolute control freak and possibly one of the most tight fisted people I have ever met.

The house I live in has a very fuel efficient but also very complicated heating system built around under floor heating. But it's very temperamental and something is always going wrong with it. Anyway, since I returned from Liverpool I've been having a few issues and I've also noticed that my electricity usage is a lot higher than it should be. Having been away for a week with the heating turned off it should have been a lot cheaper last month. Because the call out charges for the designated heating engineers are so high, he tends to try and resolve issues himself. So this is what he did on this occasion. However it all went horribly wrong and I've been left with no heating and no hot water lol. He now has to get the engineers out to sort things, but he's messed things up so bad he needs to get a few new parts and it's going to end up costing him a small fortune. The down side for me is that it probably won't be sorted until the end of next week which is a bit of a bummer.

Oh my goodness. That's not good. Still, if the good outweighs the irritations as far as neighbours go then I'm sure you will not get too stressed about it. The house next door to us is a rental. Currently empty. The last two lots of neighbours have been drug dealers - very nice but clearly a thriving trade in cannabis dealing. I got to recognise quite a few regulars and the supplier would turn up about once a fortnight in a red audi. After they moved we got a family of Mum Dad and seven kids. in a 3 bedroomed house. Mum was only 34. So many issues. 5 lads and two girls. The police were never away. One kid was drug dealing, another one pulled a knife on her Dad. My kids quite often had to act as appropriate adults while the police took statements. It was very sad really, they were lovely kids at heart. We'd take the littler ones out to the park or play with them in our house quite often. They needed space. I just used to think that there was nothing positive going for them. One of the girls who was 14 really looked up to my daughter so she would do girly stuff with her. I often wondered where she slept - a 14 year old in with her 5 brothers? You need space at that age. The other girl was only 3. Anyway they moved out very suddenly a year ago and the house has been empty since then.

 

[Barnfred 55]

Oh my goodness. That's not good. Still, if the good outweighs the irritations as far as neighbours go then I'm sure you will not get too stressed about it. The house next door to us is a rental. Currently empty. The last two lots of neighbours have been drug dealers - very nice but clearly a thriving trade in cannabis dealing. I got to recognise quite a few regulars and the supplier would turn up about once a fortnight in a red audi. After they moved we got a family of Mum Dad and seven kids. in a 3 bedroomed house. Mum was only 34. So many issues. 5 lads and two girls. The police were never away. One kid was drug dealing, another one pulled a knife on her Dad. My kids quite often had to act as appropriate adults while the police took statements. It was very sad really, they were lovely kids at heart. We'd take the littler ones out to the park or play with them in our house quite often. They needed space. I just used to think that there was nothing positive going for them. One of the girls who was 14 really looked up to my daughter so she would do girly stuff with her. I often wondered where she slept - a 14 year old in with her 5 brothers? You need space at that age. The other girl was only 3. Anyway they moved out very suddenly a year ago and the house has been empty since then.

The only thing that ever goes on in our close is deliveries, of the food and parcel variety I may add. Apart from my neighbours family, my other neighbours are a GP, his wife who is a nurse, and their daughter who's called Poppy. They are very nice too and seem to have sorted out their cat who used to use my garden as a toilet. Not sure how they've done that. I still see the cat about but it rarely if ever visits my garden any more. I kind of miss it as it was very funny when it wasn't pooing.

 

[blue1948]

The only thing that ever goes on in our close is deliveries, of the food and parcel variety I may add. Apart from my neighbours family, my other neighbours are a GP, his wife who is a nurse, and their daughter who's called Poppy. They are very nice too and seem to have sorted out their cat who used to use my garden as a toilet. Not sure how they've done that. I still see the cat about but it rarely if ever visits my garden any more. I kind of miss it as it was very funny when it wasn't pooing.

Straight from the mine of useless information ( Of which I am the founder member ) if you get lion poo or any bigger cat and spread it around the cat will not come back .Yes I know ! I just had to tell you incase you have a zoo around the corner !

 

[Bluetintedspecs]

I stopped doing history in about 3rd year at school when we had to make our O Level choices. As far as WW2 goes I think the teaching focus was mostly about the European war and not the Pacific. Having said that I also knew nothing about the battles in Italy and how the soldiers who fought there were shamefully referred to as D Day dodgers. I only discovered that when I heard a song about it.

Teachers were wicked back in the day. Have to say our nuns were lovely- in spite of the knicker inspections! So far from the stereotype of cruel nuns. They were happy clappy nuns with guitars. My brothers went to a school run by Christian Brothers who used to give them the strap. My poor Dad was educated by Jesuits and they were awful to them. He was only 5 ( in your era @Methuselah ) and used to get the cane. How naughty can a 5 year old be to deserve that.

Getting the cane was normal when I was at school, though not as young as 5. We used to have this teacher who'd pick a boy at random from the class and test out his new whacker, as he called it. It sounds terrible, but us boys used to laugh about it and, strangely, he was a very popular teacher.

We also had a teacher who liked to throw the blackboard duster at you. If you were lucky, you got hit with the soft part and were covered in chalk dust. If you were unlucky, you got hit in the head with the wooden part. He was also a very popular teacher.

It was the norm back then, so we didn't feel we were being abused at the time, but your brothers' experience sounds much worse.

 

[blue1948]

I was caned by my English teacher when I was in my early teens and he used to jump up so he could swing the cane higher ,OK I was a bit of a problem to him but that didn't justify the punishment .
All I did was put calcium carbide in the inkwells ,oh and light the gas which made the inkwell go on fire but I didn't do them all.

 

[Bluetintedspecs]

Morning all. My Grandad was a Marine in WW1. His ship got torpedoed and he was awarded a medal for bravery. He was 17. In WW2 my Nan had to go and work in a munitions factory in Chorley through the week because her Mum lived with them so she could take care of the 9 kids they had while Nan was away. My Mum's youngest sister died when a bomb dropped in the street where they lived in WW2. About a month before the May blitz. She was 6 weeks old. The shock of the blast affected her lungs. So sad.

My Grandad fought in WW1 as a teenager, too. He died when I was 16, so I never really had the chance to talk to him about the war, although he may not have wanted to anyway. I can't imagine how traumatic it must have been for him, and in 1918 there was no such thing as PTSD, so many kept it to themselves.

My mum was 5 during the blitz in 1940, when Liverpool was heavily bombed. She told me her bed used to be in the pantry, which was lined with sandbags from floor to ceiling.

 

[Terrarian]

My Form tutor, outdoor pursuits and English teacher(same bloke) ended up getting arrested as a nonce. We went pot holing once in Duddon valley and he lived there, afterwards we went to his house and he made us all strip to our under crackers before entering his house. little did we know.

Eventually he got rumbled after trying to touch up a lad and came out he had been at it for years, mental.

Never found out what happened to him in the end.

 

[Bluetintedspecs]

lol while I was out walking, I walked past a Chinese takeaway it was called Wai Ming lol made me giggle anyway.

We've got a newsagent's near us called S & M News. I kid you not.

 

[blue1948]

The school I went that had a credit/ debit system where if you got 8 credits before you got 4 debits they cleared the slate ,well I got four debits most days but the art teacher was I think sitting on the other sofa !! So all the lads who had lots of debits would clean the art room to get some credits ,the only time I have traded myself for the pleasure of others ,I think.

 

[Terrarian]

Also I had a P.E teacher who loved chucking shoes at people and a maths teacher who chucked blackboard rubbers at you. It started phasing out round about then though and became illegal.

 

[blue1948]

Also I had a P.E teacher who loved chucking shoes at people and a maths teacher who chucked blackboard rubbers at you. It started phasing out round about then though and became illegal.

We had a maths teacher who could flick a piece of chalk with such accuracy .I was his pet so it didn't come my way but he could hit an ear at 5 yards . He wasted as he could have probably thrown a good dart .

 

[Barnfred 55]

Oh my goodness. That's not good.

Actually Anj, it isn't that bad. He's loaned me a couple of oil heaters that are very good and heat downstairs. For some reason the radiators upstairs don't seem to be affected by the problem. I can boil a kettle for what little washing up doesn't go in the dishwasher. And they are literally 30 metres away when I need a shower. Plus he's said to estimate what I've paid extra in electricity and he'll deduct it from my rent.

He also now feels as if he owes me favours because of all the inconvenience. I told you he's a complex character, and because this situation is beyond his control he feels as if he's let me down in someway. The reality is he has gone over and beyond what I would have expected, and in fairness he always does whenever I have a problem with the house. The irony is, if he hadn't been such a skinflint and just paid the heating engineers to come out it would have all been sorted now.

Anyway, I've gone from being in his debt to him being in my debt, figuratively speaking, with very little inconvenience.

 

[Barnfred 55]

Getting the cane was normal when I was at school, though not as young as 5. We used to have this teacher who'd pick a boy at random from the class and test out his new whacker, as he called it. It sounds terrible, but us boys used to laugh about it and, strangely, he was a very popular teacher.

We also had a teacher who liked to throw the blackboard duster at you. If you were lucky, you got hit with the soft part and were covered in chalk dust. If you were unlucky, you got hit in the head with the wooden part. He was also a very popular teacher.

It was the norm back then, so we didn't feel we were being abused at the time, but your brothers' experience sounds much worse.

Ha ha. What school did you go to? Was it in Liverpool?

Our head teacher used to throw the board duster at you if you were messing about in his lessons. Thinking back he rarely took lessons so I guess he was probably just covering because of sickness. But he got this lad right on his eyebrow with the wooden edge of the duster and his brow just burst open with blood spurting everywhere. The Head crapped himself and rushed the lad to the sick bay, but as you say, the rest of us were all in stitches.

 

[Barnfred 55]

We've got a newsagent's near us called S & M News. I kid you not.

@Sassy Colombian likes this

 

[Barnfred 55]

I was caned by my English teacher when I was in my early teens and he used to jump up so he could swing the cane higher ,OK I was a bit of a problem to him but that didn't justify the punishment .
All I did was put calcium carbide in the inkwells ,oh and light the gas which made the inkwell go on fire but I didn't do them all.

I was caned once along with about a dozen other lads for giving a lad the bumps on his birthday. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was the same lad that got hit by the blackboard duster I mentioned earlier. He must be traumatised when he thinks back to his schooldays. Two lashes across the palm I got. Stung like hell. I didn't give anybody else the bumps afterwards I can tell you.