To Strike? or not to Strike? That is the question…..

Source: Daily Mail 28 March 2012

Well, Cameron and his Cabinet minister Maude, have done a great job of handling an imminent strike by Tanker drivers.  This smacks of the year 2000, when I remember queuing up twice over to fill our cars with fuel.  Unfortunately now, as everyone turns to diesel as a fuel that supposedly has better miles to the gallon, this is the fuel that runs out first on the pumps.  Today, even the Police cars were filling at the pumps, along with all the tradesmen’s vans, and taxi’s.

Yesterday, everything was reassuringly normal at the pumps, which I greeted with a degree of optimism, a good sign that queues had not instantly formed at the first whiff of a fuel distribution problem.  However, all change today.

As Cameron announced that he thought a Strike would be ’irresponsible’, I am inclined to agree.  Like our economy needs a bit more bashing.  As fuel prices reach an all-time high, and now commonly exceeding 1.44 GBP a litre, that is getting towards twice the price it was back in 2000.  Everyone knows that fuel duty is a nice little earner for the government (even though they strenuously deny this despite the post-budget realisation that customers will be paying another 3p more per litre after the summer….).  In Switzerland, prices were pretty low considering the cost of living as the fuel duty was quite low. Now, instead of 85CHF (60GBP) a fill up, it’s costing me about 90 GBP (130CHF) a fill here in the UK for diesel.  In Switzerland, if you really had to, you could depend on public transport to get you anywhere.  It would take a bit of planning, but it can be done.  Regular interconnected affordable mass transit.  Here, the investment has been woeful, and the bus network remains skeletal at best.  What few buses run run empty just because they are so infrequent they are not worth the effort. It’s not that cheap either.  I have to use fuel every day for a 10 minute drive to school because there were no Year 3 places in Wokingham town centre together with Year 6 vacancy in the same school.  I have a school run to do every day.  I must admit, I am looking forward to the time when both girls are in the same town, and our fuel bill will go down by about 45 GBP a week!

Thankfully, we are pretty close to the town centre, so we will be able walk and shop locally for a while, and this will blow over.  Today, I genuinely needed to fill up, and I was queuing with the panicking masses in the search for diesel.  One Shell station in Wokingham has already run dry today.  Luckily, just down the road, BP still had some this afternoon.  Even there, people’s tempers were fraying, as some cars were trying to barge in and jump the queues.  I suppose there is still a degree of English queuing etiquette despite panic buying conditions!

The Army are now being called upon for contingency measures to supply emergency services with fuel, so that really gives us confidence that the government believe that the strike will be averted through the use of the ACAS conciliation service...  I am not sure that everyone is completely crystal clear as to why a strike is completely necessary.

The government were not only advising a top up, but extra storage in Jerry cans, so you can guess what will be the next thing to run out in the shops….

Painting, Decorating and some new DIY skills…

When you walk around properties on the search for a new home, sometimes you know straight away that it may not be for you.  Others, it may have the right feel, but just have the wrong décor.  The latter is our home at the moment, some of the colour choices are just not us, like our terracotta feature wall in the bedroom for example. 

Wow, even Steve's old 1990s duvet cover matches...

 Our house has been fairly well looked after on the inside but is in need of updating here and there.

It has been quite difficult choosing what to do colour-wise inside.  In Switzerland, the Swiss would look strangely at anyone who wanted anything other than white on the walls.  Our new build was white on the outside and white on the inside.  The aisles in the DIY shops had just one colour, white…. In various shades from super-duper brilliant white to slightly off white to white-ish with a hint of white, stretching off down the long aisles into the distance.  I knew a Chinese neighbour of mine in Switzerland who had to have her house Feng Shui’ed and this involved having certain colours on certain walls throughout her house.  She told me that she had paid about 1’000CHF per wall to have this done professionally when the house was finished, it was a new build.  Wow, in England, a can of Dulux has cost us about 20GBP, way cheaper!

Of course, we did our homework whilst waiting the long process of contract signing, so we got a little bit ahead.  We had to do this, because there is a complete rainbow of paint colours to choose from, almost too many.  A great tip I read somewhere, involved getting paint testers and painting them onto an A4 piece of plain paper.  That way, you don’t need to paint a rainbow of testers on the wall (and have a nightmare painting over them when you have decided from the myriad of colours available), and you have a block of colour that you can move around the room and appreciate in different lights.  I initially went for brown hues for the lounge, but now that has evolved into something slightly different...  Perhaps harking slightly back to our now Swiss roots, we have managed to paint most of our house in Jasmine White.  It’s not brilliant white, it just has a creamy hue to it, so it’s not quite as cold feeling as Swiss brilliant white, but not as dark as the universal 80s Magnolia.  I may be blandifying our house, but let’s face it, those lovely in-vogue dark brown truffle chocolate and  raspberry/mulberry feature walls may be passé in a few years time, and dark colours are a real pain (to put it mildly) to get rid of.

Alice’s room (my youngest, 7) was the worst, here is a pic to show what it was like in all its’ blue glory.  At a guess, the teenage son was handed the paint brush and told to get on with it.  From a coverage point of view I would score him a 10.  He managed to get satinwood bold blue finish everywhere including the underside of the white coving and all over the light and power switches as nothing was masked off.  Then the inside of the window recess was given a dark blue satinwood finish too, along with navy skirting boards.  It was one of those demoralising rooms which went nowhere fast, needing 2 coats of undercoat on the skirting boards to get rid of the dark colour, and 2 basecoats on the wall to get rid of the deep blue.  The paint was slightly shiny, and there were numerous huge globs of filler roughly slapped on every wall and over painted with no sanding.  It was hideous and made a room that is actually larger than the Master bedroom feel much smaller and very dark.

Before: dark blue vanity unit and blue paint

After: upcycled white unit with LED mirror above

We have now colour changed it, to Jasmine White (of course) with a lime feature wall (as per Alice’s instructions). 

We also changed a rather dated plastic shaver point (the kind you would find in a cheap BandB on the wall) for a nice new LED mirror with shaver point to the side and a demister pad for the mirror.  It has a sensor underneath for switching the LED lights on and off, but moving your hand across the underside.  Alice is now convinced she has a magic hand, after our maintenance man found it hard to activate!

Before: blue skirts slowly disappear...

We added a floral Roman Blind, Alice chose the material, and she was very excited to see it put up a couple of weeks back.  It has taken a few weeks for her now finally to move back in after the last glossing of the cupboards was finished this weekend.  The room has a much airier feel, and this is great. 

After: new look, lighter room!

Laura’s room also had some DIY delights in store for us.  Her room was also a teenagers room, but was decorated some time ago in a 2-tone lilac and deeper purple paint combo.  Of course, the skirting boards had to be painted in a beautiful dark lilac too, just to give us a little more work to do!!  Back in January we steamed off the wallpaper in the lounge, and we also started on Laura’s room by steaming off the lovely scroll lilac border that was ¾ the way up the wall.  Whilst we were steaming, the border was coming off nicely.  Then, all of a sudden, cracks appeared in the plaster.  A faulty final skim on the plaster (that was possibly lurking there already) literally popped off.  I peeled off the top layer of skim to reveal the plaster wall beneath.  It was surprisingly therapeutic!  I have just acquired a new skill, plaster skimming. 

 Actually, my cake skills came into play, it was a little like smoothing buttercream on the many cupcakes that I used to make in Switzerland.  I used a ready mix skim, which made life infinitely easier, as I then did not need to worry about how much water to powder ratio.  I simply applied some watered down PVA to the old exposed plaster and let it dry overnight.  The suction effect on it was quite noticeable, the glue water mix almost disappearing instantly into the wall as I applied it with a roller.  The PVA helps seal the plaster and help (she says hopefully, fingers crossed) bond the new skim to the wall by slowing the drying rate, so it will or should stay there up on the wall…

This room is a north facing room, so Laura said that she also wanted it to have the Jasmine treatment all over, the purple she said was just too dark. 

mmmmm....  Purrrrrpppple

 It will undoubtedly have the effect of brightening up that room too, especially now I have removed the forest of blue-tack blobs that were inhabiting a large chunk of the ceiling in her room.  We will have to wait and see whether they change their minds to black upon reaching the age of 15 now won’t we?....