Letter from Warwick: 38 of 2008

My dear Family & Friends

We had more shit from the landlord’s family this week. Some background first: our landlord is Rajvinder. She and her older brother, Dal, inherited around 50 properties from their father when he died two years ago. All the properties are mortgaged to the hilt. The entire portfolio was managed by Dal, or should I rather say mismanaged. Now it appears that 1) the rentals are not covering the mortgage payments on many of the properties and, 2) Dal has been using some of the money for living expenses. The result is that the family has fallen into arrears (given the credit crisis), and the banks and mortgage companies have begun repossessing a number of the properties.

Now Rajvinder, a doctor, has removed the management of the properties that were in her name from her brother. The house we live in (which was the family home years ago) is in her name. The house that Dal (her brother) has been living in is also in her name. She gave him the use of the house on condition that he paid the mortgage. He hasn’t been paying the mortgage and the house is being repossessed in two days time. So Dal, ostensibly, doesn’t have a place to live.

This then brings us to the SMS text message I received from Dal at 10PM on Thursday evening: "Llelwyn (sic), i will have to give a months notice for you to vacate the property from today as due to the credit crunch and properties being repossed and dont want to leave you homeless. We have lost over a million pounds. Sorry about this but noone for saw the credit crunch. Sorry again. Dal"

I immediately sent an email to Hipesh (Rajvinder’s new property manager) and Hurjit (the estate agent through whom we rented the property) requesting an explanation and clarification of our rights and obligations under the year-long lease we signed in March. Hurjit confirmed that we have a legal and binding lease, and Hipesh told me to tell Dal to “fuck off”. I didn’t tell him to fuck off, no matter how much I was really tempted to do so, but I did respond by text message that I would no longer be accepting any correspondence from him with regard to the house we live in.

He then sent me a text message saying that his sister would send me written notice to vacate the property, and followed it up with an email indicating the legal grounds on which she would do so. It would appear under British law: “Mandatory Grounds for Possession: Ground 1 - This ground can be used where a landlord (or his spouse) has occupied the dwelling as his only or principle home at some time, and having given notice of his intention to return, now wishes to do so. Successors in title may also use this ground provided they did not purchase the dwelling.” (But he would still have to give us a minimum of two months notice on these grounds.)

I then phoned Hipesh again for an explanation and confirmation that Rajvinder would abide by the lease. He stated categorically that Dal had never held title to the property we live in, that he had no right or standing to require us to vacate the property, and that his client (Rajvinder) had no intention of resiling from the contract. I then phone Dal and, while I didn’t tell him to fuck off as I so desperately wanted to, I told him that any further harassment from him would cause us to bring legal action against him. Five minutes later he backed down with the following text message: “Just spoke to raji and she said if you are not willing to vacate you may stay on.” I still didn’t tell him to fuck off. I didn’t say anything.

And that’s where it stands. I hope that’s the last bit of grief from the landlord or her family for the time being.

In other events this week, I cooked an inedible dinner for Lucia this week for only the second time since I’ve known her. I bought a discounted “wild mallard duck” for only £3,50 at Waitrose. I suppose the word “wild” should have given it away; I’ve never really liked the taste of game. I didn’t like the smell when I opened the packaging, but I cooked it anyway hoping that hour in the oven would make it smell better. It didn’t. I still cut off a small piece to taste it, and began retching immediately. I wrapped it in five layers of plastic carrier bags (to make sure the pungent aroma never escaped again), and threw it in the dustbin. We had cheese and crackers for dinner.

The first inedible dinner I cooked for Lucia was shortly after we met way back in 2001. I was cooking a Chinese stirfry dish which called for “cracked” black pepper. I wrapped a tablespoon of pepper corns in a dishcloth and then smacked the hell out of them with a hammer on a bread board. I then tossed the lot into the dish. I remember Lucia asking me if we really needed that much pepper, but I assured with great bravura that I knew what I was doing. It doesn’t take a tarot cards to work out that the meal was inedible. I’ve never used a hammer on anything that I’ve cooked since then.

Our weekend was quite busy. We went to dinner on Saturday evening with a colleague of Lucia’s who used to work with her many years ago in South Africa, and on Sunday we went to Peterborough for lunch with Andreas and Michelle. Their daughter (my goddaughter), Natasha, kept us entertained changing clothes from her ballet costume through to something that looked like a wedding dress. Oscar, their six month old Tibetan Terrier, joined in the fun chasing her around the kitchen. Oscar is growing up to be a really cool dog; he’s a ball of fun, but he’s also obedient.

Let me leave it there for another week

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones

Letter from Warwick: 37 of 2008

My dear Family & Friends

I came across this quote from Mark Twain which, I think, quite encapsulates the business and political bumbling that chivvied the world along to this parlous state of economic affairs: “Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it.”

I’ve been shopping around for a new, bigger LCD television with the particular bells and whistles that I want. It struck me last week that there must be bargains around given the distress in the retail sector, and I wasn’t wrong. (The second largest electronics retailer in the US filed for bankruptcy last week.) Prices are down by nearly a third in the range that I’m looking at. I’m betting that the discounting will get even keener as we approach Xmas. I remember watching Sky News last year and being astounded by the fact that the after xmas sales started on xmas day here in the UK. I wouldn’t be surprised if they started before xmas this year.

I know Edgar would appreciate it if we bought a new TV. He joined us on the sofa last week to watch a programme on cheetahs on the National Geographic Channel. He watched the screen intently as the cheetahs hunted down a warthog for dinner. He stood up and walked over to the TV and sniffed at it curiously. He stood back, looked at the screen again, and then peered behind the screen and seemed a bit surprised to find Tigger huddling down on the (warm) satellite decoder. Then he took his place next to us on the sofa again and watched the rest of the programme; his eyes never left the screen. I remember someone (who shall remain nameless) once alleging that Ridgebacks were fairly stupid dogs; well, not mine bru, not mine.

Our adventure this weekend was a trip to Nottingham on Sunday. Nottingham had always been high on my list of places to visit for three reasons: 1) The stories of Robin Hood; 2) It has a (ruined) castle which played a major role in the English Civil War; 3) Nottingham Forrest was one of the leading soccer teams when I first became interested in English soccer about 30 years ago. It also has some really beautiful Victorian and pre-war architecture. But then it also has some fairly crap post-war architecture too. I blame it on the Americans for not writing off British war debt and introducing Britain to American architecture.

But there’s one thing I really don’t understand about the Brits though: why is there so little leisure activity focussed on their rivers? The River Trent, for instance, runs through the middle of Nottingham; if this were anywhere else in Europe there would be dozens of cafés and kiosks lining the riverside, but we certainly didn’t find any in Nottingham and I was really looking. You just don’t find that here, and I don’t know why. Perhaps somebody would like to enlighten me. The Leam and the Avon run right through the heart of the area we live, and I guarantee that I would be a permanent feature at a riverside café if it existed.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Pictures at: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones

Letter from Warwick: 36 of 2008

My dear Family & Friends

The ground is so wet that every footstep is a squelch. It’s quite difficult to keep the house clean. I understand why guests immediately offer to remove their footwear as they pass the threshold. I have to hose down the dogs’ paws and legs and then dry them off every time we go out. We’ve even had to take up the rug in the downstairs hallway; it was just getting to grubby. The ground can’t absorb any more water and The Leam and The Avon are full to bursting. I’m sure both rivers will burst their banks if we get much more rain in the next few days. It seems like the sky has been grey and overcast forever. I did see a little bit of sun on Friday when I went to Hull.

I went to Hull (full name Kinston-on-Hull) because I wanted to see the Humber Bridge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humber_Bridge). It’s the fifth longest single-span suspension bridge in the world. I’ve got a thing for big bridges; they are such marvels of engineering and technology while at the same time displaying such aesthetic beauty to my eye. On the way there, I followed the motorways to Nottingham and then the A-roads to Lincoln which owns a most beautiful medieval cathedral and castle, and whose ancient streets are a big draw card for tourists. I strolled around for an hour-or-so and made a note to return with Lucia sometime soon.

From Lincoln I followed the A15 to the bridge and carried on in to Hull. The effect of the Credit Crunch and deepening recession is plainly visible in the city. The Waterfront facing on to the River Humber is almost a ghost town. Bars, clubs, coffee shops and the remnants of a fruit market have all shut down. Windows are shuttered with steel. Business looked much better in the city centre, but I would have expected more activity for lunchtime on Friday. At The Quays, a shopping centre in the middle of town, the Burger King had shut down for good as had the shops next door. It just had a vacant feel to it. The upper floors of the centre still appeared to be trading as normal, but there weren’t that many people about. I had a hotdog for lunch, filled the CRV with petrol and followed the highways all the way home. An accident on the M1 outside Nottingham backed up the traffic for 20 miles (36km) and added more than an hour to my expected journey.

And talking about economic meltdown, there was an article in The Times last week that really caught my funny bone (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5093545.ece). The reason I found it so funny was because people have been threatened with fines for not sorting their waste correctly. So here we’ve all been sorting through our waste to make sure it goes into the correct recycling box, bin or bag, and nobody wants it. It appears to have no economic value whatsoever. They want to store it on disused military bases in the hope that somebody will want it in the future. The do-gooders were so focused on correctness, they forgot about value. They’re the sort of people that think commanding you to make a profit is all that it takes to ensure business success. What also really struck me was that all this waste was being shipped to China for recycling there. Why? They couldn’t do it here? Really? They had to export all our old wine and beer bottles to China so that they can be turned into new wine and beer bottles for export straight back to Europe. That means the cost of labour in China must be so low that it more than compensated for the cost of transport. Pure logic says there’s something wrong with that picture.

One of the coffee shops I used to visit in Leamington, the Cafe St Jacques, also went bust last week. The owner blamed the demise of the business in the local newspaper on the fact that custom had dropped by more than 30 percent in the last two months. He didn’t mention the crap service and barely adequate cappuccinos. When you are right next door to Starbucks, you’d better make sure that you do everything better than they do on every level. He didn’t.

Having painted this picture of general gloom, you may perhaps understand that I was a little concerned when we received a letter on Saturday from the County Court addressed to our landlord “AND ALL OTHER OCCUPIERS” giving “Notice of Eviction” in two weeks time. There was a handwritten note that it referred to a property where old landlord (our new landlord’s brother) lives. But that additional stipulation referring to “all other occupiers” had us a bit worried. I had images of us trying to find a new rental in two weeks that would accept pets. I spoke to the lawyers listed in the eviction notice, as well as the new landlord’s property manager this morning, and both assured me that the eviction notice does not refer to our home. I bloody hope so.

Our weekend adventure was a drive to Gloucester on Sunday. It’s about an hour’s drive; the city is 10 miles from Cheltenham which, you may recall, we visited a couple of weeks ago when we went to the steam and vintage rally at the Cheltenham Racecourse. Gloucester’s two main attractions are its Cathedral and waterfront on the River Severn. The city’s importance as a trading port declined with the development of the railways, leaving the waterfront to decay until some clever property developers figured they could make a bundle redeveloping the old warehouses into offices, apartments and shops. The shopping complex isn’t finished yet and I’m wondering how the developers are feeling about the economic climate. Gloucester is certainly interesting, but not necessarily worth visiting again in a hurry.

That’s it for another week.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn

Pictures at: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones

Letter from Warwick: 35 of 2008

My dear Family & Friends, 3 November

What I forgot to mention last week was that Lucia and I have booked ourselves a long weekend in Portugal in mid-December. One of the factors which influenced our decision to move to England was the opportunity it would afford us to flit off to anywhere in Europe for a weekend at a moment’s notice. Of course it doesn’t really work like that in the real world. Work constraints mean it’s difficult to find the time for Lucia, and kennelling for our four animals at £30 a day can easily double the costs. We were also really disappointed that Thomsonfly, the airline wing of the travel company, has cancelled its service from Coventry Airport. That makes Birmingham airport our nearest alternative.

It was while I was researching the airlines and services out of Birmingham airport on the Internet that I discovered some flights to Faro and back (allegedly) for £4,99 each way on Monarch Airlines for the weekend in mid-December. I called Lucia straight away to check that she could take a day or two leave, and then my sister, Barbara, to find out if we could stay with them for the weekend. Then I booked the flights. Now let me say here that this the one instance when I am entirely in favour of state intervention. The advertised price for the return fare was £10, but this excluded “taxes” which came to another £45 each. Then we had to pay another £6,50 each way to put a bag in the hold; that is, the bag’s journey was more expensive than my own. Then Monarch popped on another £5 credit card “charge”.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s still cheap for the 2500km journey each way. I just don’t think these con artists should be allowed to advertise prices which aren’t “all-in” rather than the misleading bullshit which they splash on their websites. From my own searches, it seems that Easyjet and Thomsonfly are the only “discount” airlines which advertise all-in prices; all of the others are almost certain to add layers of costs to the advertised price.

As to the week, the big event was the snowfall on Tuesday. Apparently this is the first time it has snowed in October in The Midlands since 1934. (See pictures in the usual spot at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/llewellynijones.) It was also the first time that our dogs and cats had discovered snow up close and personal. I don’t think Edgar was quite convinced at first that snow could be fun. He’s the sort of dog who normally objects to big rain drops and wet grass. I loaded them into the back of the CRV after I’d finished the ironing and took them to Victoria Park in Leamington. Edgar did not want to get out; I had to grab his collar and yank. The first couple of snowflakes to land on his nose really bothered him, but then he discovered that it was quite fun to chase them. I soon had both dogs chasing after snowballs. Then a few more dog owners appeared out of the gloom and a great big game of rough-and-tumble ensued as the dogs chased after one another. There was even a three-legged dog who could move faster than most his four-legged friends I’ve come across. I would have stayed longer, but I got cold. By the time I got the dogs to the car, Edgar had a look that seemed to say “why spoil the fun now?”

Back at home, I tried to get the cats into the spirit of the occasion by picking them up and putting them down in the middle of the garden. I don’t think they felt quite the same way about the snow as the dogs. In fact, I’m fairly certain they were quite upset with me for disturbing their equilibrium as they tried to find their way out of the cold, wet stuff with slow, giant, clown-like steps.

On Wednesday the sun was shining bright and by Thursday the snow had all melted.

Then on Saturday we had one of Lucia’s cousins from London, Barbara, and her husband, David, around for lunch. I cooked my favourite Portuguese chicken and rice dish again which had everybody going back for seconds. I’m going to have to come up with another dish for guests soon.

In the evening Lucia and I went to the annual bonfire and fireworks display at Warwick racecourse. It was pleasant enough, if a bit cold at first. Then it began to drizzle just as the bonfire of wooden pallets was lit. The drizzle turned to rain and we took shelter behind a wall waiting for the fireworks. Now anybody who has studied a little bit of physics will know the percussive force of an explosive bang is likely to cause even more rain. So it was that it rained harder and harder as the fireworks lit up the sky. I dashed off to one of the mobile food vendors halfway through the display to buy a polystyrene plate of chips (which I smothered with tomato sauce) to keep us warm. We made a dash for our car along with two or three thousand other people as the reverberations of the last bang died away.

Still, I enjoyed the display. I loved fireworks as a child, and I still do. I love the smell of cordite and gunpowder, and sparklers are guaranteed to bring a smile to my face. We were particularly spoiled at our home in Pin Oak Road in Cape Town which gave us a ringside seat for the many fireworks displays in the V&A Waterfront. The display in Warwick couldn’t match up to the grand displays we witnessed in Cape Town, but still I loved it.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn