Our new shiny old office

Almost a year ago I changed jobs and joined the smallest company I've worked for. Five of us in an office tinier than my kitchen. We moved to a larger rented suite a few months later and three more joined us. Today we take possession of the keys to our new 2000 sq ft office in one of Charles Rennie Mackintosh's lesser know buildings. The former Daily Record Building in Renfield Lane was completed in 1904, occupied by the publishers for twenty five years and then one of Glasgows 'premier outfitters' (Primark, in modern parlance) and laterly a mutual insurer. Its been derelict for the past ten years and is currently undergoing conversion into modern offices with a cafe/bar on the ground floor. Our suite has been a work in progress for the past few months, no big LCD tellys or projectors just yet but we should have a very fat broadband connection. All very exciting. Externally, it must have looked fantastic one hundred years ago but not unlike every lane in Terry Pratchetts novels, its not the kind of place you want to wander about late at night.

More money for Murdoch

So for the past three weeks or so we've been having all manner of problems with our broadband connection. Although we've only had a half-meg connection, for the past twenty one months its been (until recently) absolutely rock solid. Connections held for months at a time. Ok, it took three months and four engineers to get it up and running - but since then its been fine. Then it started dropping connections for hours, then days at a time. Twenty calls to Tesco later I eventually gave up with their Customer Services and got put through to the optimistically titled 'Retentions Department' to process my cancellation. It was busy and they promised to call me back when someone was free. How bad a sign is that? Anyhoo, as good as their word someone called Oliver called five minutes later and I explained the issues. He sounded resigned to the cancellation and made polite noises about the lack of progress on my problem. My MAC address takes two working days to generate and then we'll be on the phone to SKY. Jules got sent details of their new Surf, Speak and See package. Free calls evenings and weekends, hundreds of telly channels and (up to) eight meg downloads (we shall see, anything above half meg would be a bonus for me) and a 40Gb download limit (looks like I'll become a regular of the xvid movie bins going forward) . Fingers crossed their wireless router and LLU service has had any problems ironed out since it was launched last autumn. I said I'd never go back to SKY but sure enough their guy is coming with the new dish'n'box on Saturday. On the plus side it leaves the door open to adding HD/SKY+ when money permits..

Victory for the little guy

A couple of days after Julie had baby Charlotte I went into town to visit her at the Princess Royal Maternity Hospital. En route I swung past the deli in Candleriggs to get her some nice sandwiches. Parked outside the home of Stussy t-shirts in Glasgow, Dr Jives, I came back to the car ten minutes later to find a £30 penalty charge notice, placed neatly next to my pay-and-display ticket. Drove round (in retrospect quite unwisely) looking for the warden to lamp. Called Glasgow City Council on my mobile and thus began a five month battle with the head of the Parking Department, one Mr David Parkin (no pun intended). I had parked in a marked bay, bought and displayed a valid ticket, but still some target-monkey thought it was worth a punt putting a ticket on my car. Throughout this fiasco I've often wondered how many people would just put up and pay the fine to end the agro? Anyway, I wrote to the Council and they rejected my appeal, in effect calling me a liar. You can park in the marked bays on Candleriggs, but not in the loading bay marked areas. Makes no odds to me, as I was in the third bay out of five, so I had nothing to apologise for. The matters closed, pay up or we're taking you to Court was the tone of the increasingly threatening letters from the Council. The matters closed. Turns out you do have the right to independent adjudication - via the Scottish Parking Appeals Service. The Council didn't mention this, but I found it by myself and a few letters later the SPAS said they'd consider my appeal and any judgement would be final. So after five months of wrangling I finally got a letter from SPAS saying that the Council had (surprise surprise) decided not to contest my appeal and the matter was now closed. The Government was talking recently about compensation for successfully appealed fines - I'd be happy with an apology from the jobs-for-life-gravy-train-unaccountable-jobsworths at Glasgow City Council. Not that I'm still bitter.

Storm Damage - Welcome to 2007!

For the third time in nine years our back garden fence took a pounding during the stormiest night of the year. From our kitchen window the wind howls along the back of the three houses in our little row from right to left. Our fence is a big easy target - so much so that we've put three props running at forty five degree angles supporting some of most exposed panels. Those withstood the storm on Hogmanay, however the two panels further along took it on the chin. Overgrown bushes added a bit of further pressure, combine that with the very heavy rain and soft soil = heartache for me today. Big thanks to the King of Scotland (Big Vic) for providing a four foot iron crowbar which helped lever both concrete post bases out of their respective holes. With no shops open it'll need to wait until the weekend before I can get six bags of postmix and volunteer my old man to assist in the easy end of the job. Looking forward to it already!