An email from Lambth Planning at 7am. That’s got to be automated. No one at Your Nu Town Hall is going to be firing off unhelpful correspondence to residents before the first cup of tea of the day.
It was in response to my question about the removal of the bicycle racks at Lidl in Stockwell. I wanted to know if providing racks was a requirement of the original planning consent.
Lambeth pointed me in the direction of their crappy planning portal. Cheers, Lambeth.
I’ve looked there before. It contains 48 separate applications for the Lidl location, some of which stretch to 500+ pages. Like I don’t spend too much time already shifting through #localgov nonsense for Buzz.
I turned to my local Councillors instead. It’s a little tricky; Lidl is a five minute walk away from the flat, but is outside the ward I live in. I mailed all five Councillors across both wards. You always need a back up plan, Comrades.
We had a return to The Table of Dreams. It was bloody cold. The table had a thick layer of frost. We foolishly thought we could play on it. The ball had an extra bounce and leaped up in your face. A wipe down with some cloths soon made the table playable. I still got SPANKED 5-2.
In Waff Waff News Extra: the Table Tennis Club that we thought we had been booted out of is alive. Blimey. There’s been no WhatsApp comms for around six months. And then a call out to play later this week surfaced. It seems that the group took a sabbatical.
Album of the Day: Jane Weaver – Modern Kosmology
There’s a lovely prog space rock feel to this album. Yet still it sounds fresh and contemporary. Weaver’s voice is the real star. The analogue sound brings out the best of her talents. An unexpected surprise.
⭐ ⭐ ⭐
I had to put in a begging call to the tax office. I’ve fucked up. Not on a Zahawi size scale, but £50, all the same. I thought I ought to own up to the error before Mr Taxman laid the boot in.
There was no Mr Taxman. It was a lovely lovely friendly female on the other end of the line. She thanked me for owning up and wished me well.
Album of the Day Extra: Paul Revere & The Raiders – Midnight Ride
This plodded with some very pedestrian chord changes. The only comfort was the Johnny Cash two chord bass. Stepping Stone came close to rescuing it. But it’s one of those rare occasions when so many other covers are better than the original. Definitely of its time, not for me.
⭐ ⭐
Another Forever Forest podcast kept me company during an afternoon spent tidying up the garden. I made an absolute HACK of the bastard ivy that is growing over the wall. If only Ivy Wars back in Sunny Stockwell was so simple.
We then sat down and went through the household repair list. We’ve left this slip over the past four years whilst tied up with the Fuck Face gas engineer. The list has grown. We’re hopeful of ticking the many items off over the summer months.
I called up BT to tell them that their broadband is shit. They kinda knew that, anyway. It use to be so good in the bloody Estuary Wilds. But the past few years have seen me having to do a cold reboot of the router most mornings.
I signed up to a new contract as it breaks my heart to lose the ten year archive of TOTP rcordings on the BT box. That sounds very rational, Jase.
The outcome is that BT could see from their end that something isn’t quite right. It concerns me the level of detail they knew. But that’s the pay off for the modern interweb kid in a sweetshop magic. An engineer is calling in later in the week.
I played another armful of reggae 12’s ahead of uploading to the Jay-C Selecter channel. I’m thinking about putting myself up for a short slot at the next Lion Vibes Selecter Thursday.
I then played a roots compilation CD that I picked up in a Sunny Colch pawn shop. Reggae sounds so much better on vinyl.
A final fiddly Me Vs Them admin task of the day was to chase Royal Mail over the unknown missing package that I paid the extra postage on back in December. Royal Mail are offering a £1.50 refund on the postage, but not on the value of the unknown item.
I’m settling in for the duration on this one, Comrades.