Where I live

I was going to post this pic to illustrate why I don't get any trick or treaters, but it didn't seem appropriate somehow.

So am posting here in the hope that if I show mine, you'll show yours!

My flat is on the ground floor of this building - the windows you see are my front room.

this is our house

We live here;

Decorated for last Xmas. My only asset in life is mortgaged right up to the limit.

Not quit as nice as all of yours but surely much better security.

Here's my pad - shows what happens if you reach 'old fart' age and status and have been lucky to move at the right time in the UK housing market. It all started with a small two bedroom job needing loads of work in a not so popular part of a town called Epsom.

We've moved a total of 5 times (so far - well, who knows...) in our 30+ years of marriage. This came up at the wrong time from a family size point of view (we still had our two boys living at home as teenagers and we only had two bedrooms in this place), but the right time price-wise. We managed to get an extra bedroom added in time to prevent the domestic equivalent of World War 3.

The house is the gate house to a park and was originally just the square bit with the funny chimney stack sat in the middle of it. It dates back from mid 1800's and has been extended a number of times since the 1950's. There is a wierd-looking main house in the park itself, that has been divided into five separate houses. I'll post a picture of it later. The main house claim to fame is that it was used by Joe Kennedy when he was here as US Ambassador during WW2 - like to think that JFK may have run around my garden when he was a boy....

*Awesome* digs, CF. The sunroom/greenhouse is tres groovy. Must be rather pastoral where you are.

I'll post a picture of my wholly unremarkable suburban early-60's ranch hovel sometime soon. Looks a lot better now that the toilet and dead monitor and lawnmower are out of the driveway.

Elspode wrote:

*Awesome* digs, CF. The sunroom/greenhouse is tres groovy. Must be rather pastoral where you are.

As ever, nothing is exactly as it seems, there's always a trade off. We do have fields of horses on one side, the village road on the other (all very twee!). We get a lot of Harleys at weekends as there is a regular meet at Box Hill which is just down the road (I don't mind the HOGs and their machines - they're some of the best around, that's people and bikes). Our real trade-off is that we're only half a mile from the London Orbital Motorway, the M25 - busiest highway in the UK. It's OK when the wind is blowing from the south or west, but east and north winds just carry its noise staright into our yard (it doesn't help that the section of M-way we are next to is the only concrete section on the whole thing - so tires make a nice loud 'flap-flap-flap' noise as they cross from one concrete slab to the next). We don't notice it so much now, but visitors certainly do. Still a great place to be, all the same.

CF - I love your house!!

We just rebuilt ours over the last two years, because our original house burned down in 2003. We used the same foundation, so we went from a one story rectangle box to a two story rectangle box. The character of the place is all on the inside, as the outside is a bit boring.

I agree with the rest CF, wonderful place! Looks like it has a lot of character.

This is the part of our house that I like the best :

now that's nice

Hurricane brewing in the background?

Of course that same view looked like this last week as Wilma passed over:

man who live in glass house......

FEAR HURRICANE!

I live at school:

capnhowdy wrote:

man who live in glass house......
FEAR HURRICANE!

We sure are tired of them ... that is the problem with paradise, there is always a catch!

FloridaDragon wrote:

Of course that same view looked like this last week as Wilma passed over:

The son of a friend of ours who lives in SW Florida is still trying to get a palm tree out of his pool and conservatory (do you call them that or sunrooms?). Glad to see yours survived. Couldn't have been easy dealing with Wilma, even so.

Like the sunny shot and that pool. I think I'll have to dig the floor up inside ours. Mind you with the regular wet weather we have here I might not have to as we get our fair share of water inside anyway. You'd think the Brits would know how to build 'em so they didn't leak, but seems not. Everyone I know who has a conservatory suffers leaks! Although, having said that, ours is holding out so far this year after some repairs during the summer...(mustn't speak too soon).

Dark morning and evenings now here so will have to wait until the weekend for the picture of the big house (the one I have which I thought I'd use isn't so good)

Cyclefrance wrote:

We get a lot of Harleys at weekends as there is a regular meet at Box Hill which is just down the road

Ah...this is another reason I love The Cellar. At long last, I now know the significance of a line from Richard Thompson's "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" -

"And he pulled her on astride, and down to Box Hill, they'd ride".

I love these little moments of enlightenment.

Elspode wrote:

Ah...this is another reason I love The Cellar. At long last, I now know the significance of a line from Richard Thompson's "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" -

"And he pulled her on astride, and down to Box Hill, they'd ride".

I love these little moments of enlightenment.

I'll try get you a photo of the two places they meet - one is at the bottom of Box Hill, Ryka's Cafe, and the other at the top - used to be called the Zig Zag (after the road but think it may have changed). HD have a big outlet/showroom in Dorking which is the town below Box Hill.

Will post in Cities and Travel all going well...

Cyclefrance wrote:

snip~ You'd think the Brits would know how to build 'em so they didn't leak, but seems not. Everyone I know who has a conservatory suffers leaks! Although, having said that, ours is holding out so far this year after some repairs during the summer...(mustn't speak too soon).

LJ would say......Caulk. :lol:

Good catch Elspode.....love that song.

xoxoxoBruce wrote:

LJ would say......Caulk. :lol:

Don't mention caulk - the first AH who came to fix the roof put sealant all over the edges of the glazing - so badly that he caused leaks where before we hadn't had any, and in the end had to have the glazed panels individually removed cleaned and replaced (by someone who knew what they were doing!)

My God. Your houses are so wonderful. I cant buy any apartment in my city, Guangzhou now.

Billy, you have to find a woman that has a house. ;)

That's kinda how I got mine, found a woman who was good with money, but it wasn't really worth it. :boxers:

Here are the pictures of the main house in Headley Park - hope you find them interesting. A bit of house history: The original house was destroyed by a fire in the late 19th century, and this one was built around 1905, and owned by Mappin (of Mappin and Webb, well known London jewellers). The architecture is therefore very much English Arts and Crafts movement.

Two more photos:

Billy wrote:

My God. Your houses are so wonderful. I cant buy any apartment in my city, Guangzhou now.

Strange to hear of Guangzhou right now - I'm just about to start managing a contract for a ship that has been built there called the Maersk Belfast (it's Belfast not Baltic, but I keep writing Baltic even though I'm thinking Belfast - it's probably an age thing!). One of our directors was in Guangzhou at the end of September attending the naming ceremony. The ship delivers to the owners Maersk on 23 November, and then takes its first cargo of vegoils loading in Philippines and Indonesia for a voyage that ends up with cargo discharging in Italy (Ravenna and Genoa). Small world...

I didn't know Guangzhou is a port city. Thought it was inland where the three rivers meet. :smack:

xoxoxoBruce wrote:

I didn't know Guangzhou is a port city. Thought it was inland where the three rivers meet. :smack:

Well, it is some way in from the coast, but up a reasonably navigable river, so the vessel could get out unladen, if not in laden. Maersk are building a series of 29,000 tons cargo size vessels at Guangzhou. Found a picture of the one that was launched before the Maersk Belfast

Crude, dirty or clean petroleum products, vegoils and easy chemicals! :speechls:
And how do they clean this sucker between loads?

xoxoxoBruce wrote:

Crude, dirty or clean petroleum products, vegoils and easy chemicals! :speechls:
And how do they clean this sucker between loads?

There are cleaning chemicals these days that allow a ship to change straight from a dirty cargo like fueloil or crudeoil to something like jet fuel, especially when the ship has high quality coatings to its tanks (coatings are made of epoxy resin - like a non-stick pan, but on an industrial scale) or the tanks are stainless steel lined.

Generally a ship can change from dirty to clean by stages of trading in clean(er) cargoes, like taking a semi-clean cargo like Marine Diesel Oil, then three cargoes of clean Gasoil. The amount of cleaning between grades is comparatively negligible this way. This method is generally accepted as being sufficient to then trade very clean cargoes like Naphtha or Jet Fuel. A vessel that has traded the last two products mentioned would have little trouble then trading easy chemiclas - but the vessel would have to be specifically certified to carry easy chemicals first - there are different levels of certification and a vessel will generally be built to meet such specification.

Oh BTW all cargoes need to be lead-free to continue such trade - not so much of a problem these days, but it used to be.

Vegoils? I'm thinking food. :worried:

xoxoxoBruce wrote:

Vegoils? I'm thinking food. :worried:

Think soap and skin creams as well, animal feeds, bio-fuels, margerine - might have guessed I'd find something on the web - not sure if this owner knows that his company presentation is there, but it is quite a good reference if you want to know more about these markets in a digestible format

Plus another one here - uses can be found towards the end of the piece

Sure, but I'd be more concerned about things headed for the table that are carried in the same holds as petroleum products and easy chemicals, than something that's processed for soap. :eyebrow:

xoxoxoBruce wrote:

Sure, but I'd be more concerned about things headed for the table that are carried in the same holds as petroleum products and easy chemicals, than something that's processed for soap. :eyebrow:

Strict rules about what can and can't precede a vegoil cargo from body called FOSFA (Federation of OIl Seeds and Fats Association) who produce two clear lists of last cargo products: FOSFA Acceptable and FOSFA Banned. Each country may also have its own lists - Europe has an EU1 list of acceptable last cargoes. Controls are pretty tight and tanks and lines are tested by contact sampling (wipe the walls and test the resultant residue), plus samples are taken and tested at the vessel manifold (where the shore lines connect o the ship, with first footings (the first few tons of product to arrive in tank) and final samples (normally top, middle and bottom samples after loading is completed). Similarly rigorous testing is carred out before discharge at the destination.

And nobody would cheat or resort to bribery to make a buck. :headshake

xoxoxoBruce wrote:

And nobody would cheat or resort to bribery to make a buck. :headshake

Of course they would - anywhere there is a chance to make a good/quick buck there'll always be someone trying to flout the rules. However, on the food chain stuff the controls up as far as discharge are pretty good at picking this sort of thing up. Important 'contaminants' are measured as appropriate for traces in levels as low as ppb (parts per billion). I'd be more worried about the effects on humans that growth hormones fed to cattle have or for that matter GM crop contamination - but that (and this really) is probably for another thread if we start expanding the discussion....

I'd be more worried about the effects on humans that growth hormones fed to cattle have or for that matter GM crop contamination

But those are Intelligent Design. :o

xoxoxoBruce wrote:

But those are Intelligent Design. :o

Nice one! - See you there...