Trivia

Various minor annoyances today.

First, the gas board have updated their computer system, meaning that we are now no longer 'Mr and Mrs Jim Toller', which while possibly correct does not look or sound as well as 'Mr and Mrs Toller'. Things have got worse. I have been dumped altogether and our account is now called 'Mrs Linda Toller' and the salutation on the letter telling us about this is 'Hello Linda'.

Not quite the under-age care home staff going 'come along Jimmy dear, time to play pat-a-cake with everybody else. It will make you feel so much better', but definitely tendencies in that direction. A tendency that both my mother and BH's father loathed, both having worked hard to reach positions in the world where they got a bit of respect. While I loathe the fake bonhomie of 'hello Linda', with some computer or clerk pretending to be a friend. Almost as much as the 'call me Tony' of a former Prime Minister.

Second, the Resident's Association have sent us a Xmas newsletter with two items of interest. The residents being the crypto-conservatives who, curiously, have run Epsom & Ewell Council for years and years. One of the very few in the whole country.

So, not content with fishing permits and people sitting in idling cars, the council enforcement officers are muscling into the trolley scene and have removed more than a 100 trolleys. We are not told since when or where to, but I hope they do the decent thing and return the trolleys to their rightful owners. It seems a bit wasteful just to store them up in some trolley pound and make said owners come and collect them. They might be responsible, but it is not really their fault that people make off with their trolleys.

And the residents are continuing to wail and gnash their teeth about someone wanting to build houses in the very large back garden of Clay Hill Lodge on Clay Hill Green, top left in the snap above. An application (21/00167/FUL) which received the attention of both the archaeological people and the chiropterological people and which has been refused pending appeal. Which I find curious, given the interesting, retro-twenties flats erected a bit further down, here called Birchdene and Court Lodge. Flats which were once alleged to have been owned by an oligarch, either Ukrainian or Russian. Perhaps the archaeological people carried the day, with their fussing about the ancient brick wall running along the north- and south-western boundaries to the plot as a whole. A brick wall which has almost been made into an ancient monument. At the owners' expense, naturally.

I am reminded of the bananas of reference 3: 'build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything'.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/search?q=zestan. The retro story, at some length, but with lots of pictures.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/12/heritage-old-and-older.html. Another bit of brick wall, this one interior rather than exterior, which the heritage people have got their teeth into.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/12/trolley-551.html.