1970 Summer 2012

In the plimsoll screech gym With its girls voice echoes As we 1, 2, 3 shoot to the tinny Thai tune I hear the sail flap of exam paper and window blind: Peace prevails.

Services: The TV licensing story.

As soon as I moved into the property. I started getting threatening letters from TV licensing. They were watching the property and escalating getting the money for the licence back. I informed them that I had moved and that I had a licence, but to contact the freeholder. Several increasingly threatening letters later. I rang them and sorted it out. They moved my TV licence from my old address to my new address.

Yesterday I got a new letter from them. We note that you do not have a TV Licence, you must go and buy one.

I will just wait for the bailiffs, perhaps I will get more sense from them.

Services: The BT story.

I hated BT for many years in my old property, getting their services sorted out almost drove me to despair. It took about 10 technicians and dongles to get the service working. But for the last couple of years it has vaguely been ok. And when I discovered the new property did not have a phone at the same time as I was offered internet teaching, I had to approach them. Only if they could supply a phone line, and a quality service, could I move. They assured me all would be well.

A lovely engineer called round 3 weeks after I had moved in. Three weeks without internet work. He had a few problems with the phone line, but was able to assure me it would be sorted by the following day. He was not supplied with a BT dongle so had to wind loads of wire round the flat, cracking walls, to get the internet in, but it worked. Yippee.

Then it stopped, then it started. then it stopped ... You get the picture. I was trying to start my new internet teaching post, but was tearing my hair out instead. I could not even phone anyone to get it sorted out as the phone did not work for 2.5 weeks. BT agreed to compensate me for that loss. Meanwhile I was assured that outside engineering work would resolve the internet problems. I hoped so: the dongle I had been given by a friend, so that I could work, was not working either. He had to go to Welwyn Garden City a couple of times and several other shops before getting a new one that worked, but that is another service story. So every time my system crashed he would have to load up his dongle and dash over to rescue me, several times I lost work and he lost time and money.

I was on the now working phone regularly to BT begging them to sort it. I only earn £6 an hour for my work and phoning them was taking that amount of time. I pleaded with the staff to enable me to earn a living and they seemed sympathetic. They said the problem was the ethernet cable. They said they would send out a new welcome pack. It did not come. I contacted them again. They promised another internet cable: it did not come either. Finally I begged them send me a dongle: they said it is not BT's policy to help their customers in this constructive way, or words to that effect, we would rather spend hours on the phone damage your health and our reputation than do anything useful However, they did say they were escalating my case to help sort it out more urgently. Given that I had been suffering for two and a half months and unable to work properly I wondered why I had not been a priority before. They promised to send an engineer and it was fixed for last Wednesday. I got a text confirming the apppointment for last Monday. I wrote to them begging them to resolve the problem and giving them the correct time for the appointment.

The engineer came on Monday. Luckily, he arrived when I had a moment and so far, he has fixed the problem: a faulty hub. I wrote for compensation for the stress, lost time, lost income and my friends unnecessary expenses. And asked for a letter to provide my employers so that they know I am reliable and that the problem was not something I could expect or resolve on my own.

I got a phone call next day, the woman, did not know the engineer had been round,she explained that my emails had been going to the wrong place within BT, but she promised to send me an email so that I cold reply to her and be in the right place to resolve any remaining issues. I got her email. It said she was going on holiday!. The next day someone else rang me she informed me I had gone without a phone for two days, had received £13 so what right had I to expect anything more. I suggested she had her facts wrong.She said she had not as the information was written down in front of her. I don't like to tell you what I growled at her from my stress induced sick bed.

I don't want to ring BT on my now working phone. I do not want to email them, on my now working internet. I just want to receive a big fat cheque, like the one, they will demand from their suppliers. I think I could be waiting a long time.

Services: an oxymoron? The Eon story.

I have decided that Eon is called Eon because it takes them Eons to sort anything out.

One of the reasons for moving is that so much work was needed on my place and I find dealing with anything official or physical so challenging. I naively therefore thought a new property would be easier than sorting out my old property. Silly me, I had not counted on the inefficiencies of services.

Eon have billed me three times for my electricity account with them. Initially they were charging me for the whole house, and have continued to do this. Then they sent a new bill saying I owe them nothing, but the lastest bill says I owe £50. None of these bills have the meter reading I gave them and all of them are guess work. As is the gas bill they just sent me. It is a bill for £25 on my pre-payment meter account!!!!

Why buying a property can be so distressing.

Over a year ago I decided to sell my property. I had work in London, my son was in London so a move seemed a good idea. I also found a nice two bed flat for £175,000 so I could rent out a room and have a bit of money to spare.

That was until the Government stepped in. I was already off sick And they wrote to me and told me I owed them between £4000 and £12,000. I am still contesting this, but the shock kicked in my M.E and I had my first major relapse in 7 years. I lost my job and had to live on my savings. Since I had already been drawing on my savings anyhow I then had to decide do I stay put and continue to rent out a room or do I downsize get something a bit more manageable considering my health. (Because of my health it is difficult for me to earn a good income so I would still need a room to rent out) I searched high and low and to my amazement last summer found a place round the corner that fitted the bill. A flat with freedhold and two double bedrooms. It seemed ideal except that....


The house the flat is in has always had a strange vibe. But it was better inside than I thought but not perfect, but provided it required no work on it and the co-freeholder was reliable it was just about worth moving. Otherwise staying put was much better. As it was to be a life raft, it was vital everything was okay. I fully informed the Estate Agents of my perilous financial situation. The staff at WHBrown in Broxbourne told me not to bother with a survey, that I could expect to spend a bit of money, but it was just surface work, and most importantly that the owner was reliable. They also tried tugging on my heart strings by saying my buyers, who had waited 6 months, were desparate to move in by Christmas. With lots of assurances in place. I leapt.... I was even told that the owner would clean the flat out before I arraived and would leave the fridge in place.

I wish.

No fridge, place filthy, with some of the the previous tenants possessions still in place. I electrocuted myself the moment I tried the cooker. The extractor fan does not work and I have had to get a plumber in to show me how to use the central heating as after two months of trying to get hold of the co-freeholder I gave up. I feel I have been miss-sold the property so I am now putting in a complaint to the Estate Agents "Neutral" complaints system. So far they are telling me, it was my choice to buy the flat so there would be no redress!! Needless to say I do not agree and nor do several official bodies I have spoken to, but unfortunately it turns out there is more protection in law if you buy a bar of chocolate than if you spend £10,000 to move. Buyer beward people can lie to you and you have no redress.!!!

Facing M.E in East Herts.

I am setting up a facebook site for people local to me with M.E I am trying to put the information in this space, but do not really get the instructions. This is not just M.E. fog it is modern technology fog.

Berlin now and then, or then and now.

Sherlock Holmes surprised by the Berlin Wall.
Some thirty years ago two friends and I decided to do something different for New Year’s Eve. I can’t remember why, but we lighted on Berlin. It turned out to be an inspired idea. From the vast recesses of our “ hotel” really a room in someone’s house, where the landlady tried to capitalise on our lack of German to charge us twice, to the wild explosion of fireworks ricocheting around us as the clock struck midnight, it was an intoxicating experience. As a history of art student I revelled in the museums, especially Die Brucke museum and Spandau Citadel both set in the lovely countryside of Berlin, I also felt the chill of fascism in the Olympic Stadium where Jesse Owen had trounced Hitler’s dreams while my friends dipped into the zoo and the shops. The most exciting part of the holiday however, was the day we confronted the reality that West Berlin was a speck in the middle of the FDR, by passing through passport control, under the wall and into East Berlin. The contrast between the two towns was stark, East Berlin was grey, with uninspiring blocks of flats and ancient neglected churches. It felt tranquil, but the bullet marks on buildings and the plaque commemorating Kristallnacht; when hundreds of synagogues were destroyed and thousands of Jews arrested were sombre and telling. But we enjoyed our incredibly cheap purchases in the frighteningly sparsely provisioned shops and our meal out before once again diving into the depths of the undergrounds past mothballed stations and back out into the vibrant west. None of us particularly liked the capitalist bragging in the Checkpoint Charlie museum but the real horror of the wall loomed over everything making for a fascinating and complex visit.

10 years on from the fall of the wall and with Ryanair offering return flights for less than £40 I decided it was time to come back and see what changes had taken place. Getting there took less than four hours; my hotel was very reasonable, with easy access to Schönefeld airport, and the centre of town. In the company of a friend who lives in Berlin I nipped around Turkish orientated markets, quaffed coffee in river side cafes, took in the Friedrichstrasse, climbed the bell tower of the Huguenot Franzosischer Dom, crossed the frozen Alexandraplatz, where Engels and Marx gaze over the vast white expanse and chatted with what we took for Chinese tourists taking photos of their Communist Gods, who turned out to be from Frankfurt. We then took the train over to the Tiergarten, walked through the Government buildings where we gained free and easy access to the Reichstag, with its surreal frozen views of Berlin, passed through the Brandenburg Gate, and finally rushed along to the Mies Van De Rohe designed art gallery. We took the train down to my friends neighbourhood to visit his huge, reasonably priced old Berlin apartment and stylish local modern shopping centre, bought wonderful cheese cake, and then headed back into town to a pub called the Arcanoa where the bar has a little stream running through it, live music, people dressed in Middle Ages costumes, and where I tried a lovely sour cherry flavoured local drink called Kiba before happily heading back through the snow to my hotel.

I only had two days which is not enough but I bought a pass that covered all forms of transport and all parts of the town that only cost 16.90 Euros and as ever when in Germany I found the town attractive and easy to navigate around. It felt strange on the Unter Den Linden to recognise places from my past trip, places that had once been part of two towns, that now seamlessly fit into a reconstituted whole. Bits of the wall remain, but if you did not know the history of Berlin it might seem like any Northern European capital, cultured and charming. But Germany has decided to acknowledge its darkest past. Next to the Reichstag in the heart of the Government centre of town, a forest of plain grey slabs mourn the dead of the holocaust. My friend hates it, feeling it overshadows the long and in many ways distinguished history of Germany. He prefers the small, local and personal memorials that are placed in the streets outside the properties where the “lost” families once lived, but I found it moving and vital; the accompanying museum brings to life some of the vibrant Jewish culture that once enhanced Europe but that was tragically and senselessly wiped out by the residents of the Government building that lies beneath the memorial.

Complex as ever, Berlin remains the perfect place for a rewarding visit.