10 December (Part 1) - Bring back Gallions. Bring back Serco
To think that draining down a 35 year old central heating system might be an
easy experiment to see if it might stop the loud banging noises was probably naive. The plumbers who work on new
houses need a job from which they can disappear afterwards without fear of being
chased my irate customers.
When I bought this house I had to refit the hot water tank and later strip the
kitchen plumbing back to the stop cock and rebuild it from scratch. Yesterday
the fact that the ball valve and the cold water tank tap were both corroded
solid was not all that unexpected but having to move the tanks to get access to
the plumbing nuts I could have done without.
So far things seem to be improved.
While hidden away in the loft two Councillors emailed comment about
my leaning tree.
No part of it stands up straight so I can only guess that it has grown too heavy
for the ground to support its weight.
Councillor Dave Putson (Independent, Belvedere) tracked down the email address
of a useful Peabody contact and a few hours later Sally Hinkley (Labour)
offered to do the same thing. Thanks both. Along the way it was revealed that a
Bexley tree that looked to be OK fell earlier this year and caused some very
expensive damage.
Maybe a helpful Councillor knows where to complain about missed bin collections. I had
nothing to put out this morning but I watched next door’s white bin being
collected and I saw the truck stop two doors further along but they missed the one in between.
Probably that is not very remarkable except that it happens almost every time. My
neighbour usually reports it but is a little frustrated that the web page has no facility for adding comments.
Based on the experience in one short cul-de-sac with only five houses and only
four regular white bin users CountryStyle is definitely no better than Serco.
Note: Gallions was Peabody’s predecessor that I always found very responsive.