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The garden: preferred solution

I’ve blogged about the solutions that Chris and I had considered for the garden and rejected. That made me explicitly consider what I needed from a potential solution:

  • Affordable
  • Less ugly than the current concrete blocks
  • Low (or preferably zero)  maintenance
  • Taking up as little additional space as possible

I put these constraints to  the landscape gardener, and challenged him to come up with a solution. And he did! I’ve included some engineering drawings of the solution. The drawings are copyright Geomex Ltd, whom I commissioned to do the survey.

Cross-section of the proposed solution

The idea is to lay galvanised  steel I-beams against the existing blocks, and concrete the bottom of them into the underlying rock. Then reclaimed railway sleepers will be slotted into the I-beams.

I can either leave it plain, which should at least be less ugly than the bare blocks, or attach vine-eyes to the sleepers and grow climbers up it. Probably the latter, as I think that would be more interesting to look at.

I’ve had acknowledgment from the Council that they’ve received my planning application. So now it’s  case of waiting until I hear whether they’ll agree to it.

 

 

05 06 2011 Gillian garden Comments (2) Permalink

A Handbag??

I’m not sure whether to describe last night’s trip to Malvern Theatres as a visit to the theatre or the cinema. The ticket was twice the price of their cinema tickets, but only half the price of a theatre ticket. And the venue was neither the cinema nor the theatre, but the third, flexible performing space, the Forum. I don’t go there very often – in fact I think the last time was to a John Williams concert with Chris.  Perhaps fortunately, I didn’t recall that fact until after I’d got home.

The occasion was a performance of The Importance of Being Earnest, filmed a few months ago on Broadway, and projected onto a large screen in HD. So it was like a cross between a “proper” theatre performance (actors playing in front of a live audience, no second takes) and the cinema (multiple camera angles, close-ups, a better view of the action that one would get even from the best seats in the house). It felt quite odd, as the cast clearly had a rapport going with the audience – but not with our audience.

Brian Bedford as Lady Bracknell

As you would expect from a top Broadway performance, the scenery, costumes and cast were all superb. Wilde can be quite tricky to pull off, to make the unending stream of witticisms sound natural. But they did it very well. Lady Bracknell was quite a revelation. She was played by the director, Brian Bedford. Yes, a man! And he did it pretty straight too – not at all as a man in drag or a pantomine dame. In fact he was a very believable and terrifying elderly dragon – he said in a recorded interview that was part of the performance, that he was channelling some of the really formidable old women he had met throughout his career.

The performance had been very badly publicised locally (I’d only come across it by accident on the Malvern Theatres website) so the venue was almost empty. A real shame, as it was a superb opportunity to see a really top-class production at a bargain price. I bumped into some friends, Sue and Nic, and moved to sit with them as there was plenty of space. We stayed on for a drink and gossip afterwards, so as a result I didn’t get home until well past my bedtime!  It was a really good evening out. Now I know that Malvern Theatres do that sort of performance, I shall keep a look out for more.

03 06 2011 Gillian Day out Comments Off on A Handbag?? Permalink

Applying for Planning Permission

Herefordshire Council does free “planning surgeries” in Ledbury, where you can turn up without an appointment and ask for an informal opinion from a planning officer. I took along pictures of my garden, explained the problem, and asked whether I would need planning permission to sort it out. Obviously, I’d much prefer not, as it’s an added level of expense and bureaucracy that I could well do without.

The planning officer drew a deep breath, sucked his teeth (I’m getting used to that reaction to my garden!) and said that it was a tricky one. He confessed that he had never seen anything like my garden before (somehow, I wasn’t surprised) and agreed that almost anything I did would be an improvement over what I’ve got; however he would need to get a second opinion from his senior officer as to whether or not it fell inside the remit of planning law. He took my number and said he’d get back to me.  Later that afternoon he phoned, true to his word, and gave me the verdict.

Unfortunately, yes, I do need planning permission, for the triple reasons of it being “engineering works”, “a retaining wall more than 2m high” and “in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty”. He implied that it shouldn’t be too much trouble to get planning permission, as clearly Something Needs to Be Done. However, I would have to abide by the formalities. That was a real nuisance, as now I needed to get proper scale drawings of plan and cross-section, showing proposed materials and fixings etc. So a few weeks ago I had a structural engineer around to do a topographical survey of the garden and draw up plans which I have submitted to the council. They’ve just started writing to the neighbours to notify them, although I’ve already spoken to the closest two who would be most affected, and they are both supportive of the plans, which is good. Now I have to wait for the process to grind slowly on.

01 06 2011 Gillian garden Comments Off on Applying for Planning Permission Permalink

A roof back over my head

It took three workmen two and a half days to mend my roof, finishing yesterday (Saturday). Apparently, times are so bad out there that they have to work a six-day week and Bank Holidays to keep the business going.

They replaced about a metre’s worth of rotten  rafters all the way up the pitch of the roof above the bathroom. They told me that the original Victorian sawdust insulation between the rafters was still there!  It seems to work well enough though – I always have long-lasting snow on my roof, even with the central heating going full blast inside.  They’ve primed all the woodwork, ready for the painter, whom I already had booked to come back in July.

I’m not looking forward to getting the invoice, but at least I’ve got a (hopefully sound) intact roof back before the heavy rain that is promised for tomorrow. The outside light doesn’t work any more though -they had to unscrew it to replace the wood it was attached to, and I suspect that water got in at that point. Or the bulb just blew. I may have a look tomorrow and see if it’s as simple as changing the bulb. If not it will have to go on The List of things to do.

29 05 2011 Gillian status Comments Off on A roof back over my head Permalink

A rough week

It was my birthday this week, and I found it very difficult indeed. I missed Christopher so much. It was a huge struggle to get out of bed that morning – I really wanted to just turn over and pull the duvet over my head. Perhaps fortunately I had some meetings arranged at work that day, so I couldn’t take the easy option. But it was so hard.

I decided not to “celebrate” my birthday this year – there really doesn’t feel like much to celebrate. So I just had  quiet evening at home. The next evening, however, I joined a friend from work, plus 53 other local women, for dinner at the theatre, followed by a performance of Calendar Girls. Fortunately, I knew the plot having seen the film, so wasn’t surprised when the husband of  one of the main characters died of leukaemia half way through the first act. But I did find it somewhat gruelling and rather too close to the bone for comfort. I don’t think I’d have stuck it out if I’d been on my own, but as part of a large group I could cope. And it got much funnier and less traumatic once they started taking their clothes off! On a side note, why are so many comedies about the lead character’s  husband dying of cancer? I don’t find it amusing……

On top of all that, I’ve got the builders in yet again. Joiners and carpenters this time. They’ve replaced a window in the utility room with a double-glazed one, which is something I’ve wanted to have done for several years. We also agreed that they would replace a small area of barge-board and soffit round the back of the house, which was rotten. Unfortunately, once they started repairing it, they found that the rot was much more extensive than they had believed. A large section of the roof above the bathroom is rotten, and I need new rafters as well as a much larger section of fascia repaired. It seems to be due to a badly-installed soil-vent pipe (I think that’s what it’s called) that wasn’t properly weatherproofed and so has been leaking water into the woodwork for many years. It clearly needed to be fixed before there was a very expensive catastrophic failure, but I’m not at all happy about it!

27 05 2011 Gillian Day out
status Comments (2) Permalink

Rejected options for the garden

I mentioned the other day that I want to sort out my garden. I thought I’d blog here about the ideas that Chris and I thought about and rejected. I’ll leave the current candidate solution for another time.

As David A. pointed out in the comments to the previous post, the slope is intrinsically unstable – that is, it is steeper than the critical angle for soil. Even if I hadn’t known the theory from studying soil mechanics at college, there is empirical evidence on a regular basis – in the form of a sad heap of slabs and soil after a rainstorm. So somehow it needs to be fixed in place.

The first idea that Chris and I had was to buy hundreds, or more probably a few thousand, L-shaped steel rods, with the long side around 30cm and the short side maybe 15cm. These would then be driven into the bank behind each slab, holding it in place. When we discussed this with a landscape gardener, we came up with several objections. Firstly, it would be very labour-intensive, as each slab would need individually fixing to the underlying rock, probably involving drilling into the underlying granite. Then again, we don’t actually know how close the granite is to the surface, and hence how long the tie-rods would need to be. And then, even after all that work was done, it would look exactly as it does now – i.e. ugly, leaving me still with a major problem to find anything to grow in it. Rejected on grounds of aesthetics.

My next idea, and what I still would really want in an ideal world, is a proper retaining wall built of Malvern stone, to match the house. There were several objections to that. Firstly, it isn’t possible to get large quantities of Malvern stone any more as there is no longer any quarrying on the hills. You can however get something similar from the Forest of Dean, which is what we used for our extension, so that would be acceptable. I got a local stone mason, who is an expert on building Malvern stone retaining walls, to give me a quote. It would be a huge job. The slabs would all have to be removed, and first a breeze-block retaining wall built, with proper foundations. Then that would be faced with the stone. The chap came round, sucked his teeth, did some measurements, and came out with an absolutely unaffordable quote just for the lower terrace. He didn’t even bother to quote for the upper terrace. Rejected, on grounds of price.

The next idea that Chris and I considered was one that David A. mentioned in his comment. That is something called gabion baskets. These are wire mesh cubes  (think industrial-strength chicken-wire) ranging in size from around 60cm to 100cm on a side. You fill them with crushed rock/rubble, and they can be used for building sturdy, if ugly, retaining walls. In fact, my neighbour over the road has some, forming a retaining wall next to the road. But that is a relatively small wall, and well away from her house, and barely visible. Not a 4m high wall directly outside the kitchen window, as mine would be. The idea would be to grow climbers up the mesh to hide it, though I am sure that weeds would take root too and be hard to exterminate. There are three problems with going this route. First, it was surprisingly expensive. Not as much as a stone wall, but still sit-down-and-take-a-deep-breath expensive. Secondly, it would take up a huge amount of space in the garden. The idea would be to place the gabions against the existing slabs to hold them in place. But that would take up about a metre of garden – and the path on the top of the first terrace would be completely obliterated by the gabions. Thirdly, it would be nearly as ugly as my current slabs.  Rejected on the triple grounds of price, taking up too much room, and aesthetics.

This was all happening last summer, with Chris getting sicker by the week, so I didn’t have a lot of bandwidth to spare to consider other options.  Hence the project got put on hold for a bit at that point – filed under “too difficult” – until I had more time and energy to address it.

24 05 2011 Gillian garden Comments (1) Permalink

Sysadmin help

My college friends Tom and Katie, and their daughter (my un-god-daughter) Tia came to visit on Sunday, on their way home from seeing family in Wales. We all went out to lunch at the Plough and Harrow (again! I seem to be going there quite a bit recently, which is definitely a good thing).  Then Katie and I waved Tom and Tia off in the car, and Katie stayed on overnight. I took the Monday off work, so we were able to have a good long chat and catch up properly.

Like Christopher, Katie is an Apple computer fan, and I really wanted her expert help on the subject of his iPad. Chris had only had it for a matter of a two months or so before he went into the hospice, and had never shown me how to use any of it beyond the web browser and a few games. He also hadn’t told me his iTunes/Appstore password or written it down anywhere I’ve found. So the upshot of all of that was that I’ve been using it stand-alone for the past nine months.  It’s never been “synchronised” to the desktop, it was running a very old version of the iPad operating system, and was getting distinctly unstable – it really hated the Independent newspaper website, and I had to give it a hard reset every time I’d been browsing that newspaper.

Between us, Katie and I broke into iTunes by guessing his password, updated the details to be mine not his, synchronised it to the desktop machine (which itself hadn’t been turned on for 10 months so needed a lot of housekeeping and security updates), updated iTunes and the iPad operating system, updated all of the apps and downloaded some more, and generally tidied things up. Perhaps the one change I’m most pleased about is that she changed the “from” name on the email app, so that it now appears to come from me, rather than Chris. Up until then, if I saw something while browsing on the iPad that I wanted to be reminded about at work, I would send myself an email. But when I logged on at work the next day there would be a message in my inbox apparently from Chris Booth – and that was getting upsetting.

None of it turned out to be particularly difficult, but there were a lot of stages involved and it took all afternoon. It was really helpful to have someone to help me walk through it all, as I’m sure I would have got discouraged half way through. Up until then, I’d given up at the guessing the password stage. I’m afraid that’s another example of me shamelessly making use of my friends when they come and visit!

19 05 2011 Gillian status Comments Off on Sysadmin help Permalink

A college dinner

Last Friday I was invited to a dinner in Oxford, the annual engineering scholars’ reunion at my college. I wasn’t able to go last year, as it was in the middle of Christopher’s final round of chemotherapy – the one which ended up with him hospitalised in an isolation ward with neutropenia. But in previous years, I’ve generally attended if I’ve been free, and I usually rather enjoy myself. So I thought I ought to make an effort to go this year.

The dinner ends around 11pm, which is far too late to get a train back to Malvern. And there is no way I’m driving anywhere after drinking the college port. So the only realistic choice is to get a hotel room for the night in Oxford. The Randolph Hotel is the closest to college, but is very overpriced (and the standard rooms are tiny) so that’s not really an option – I totally object to feeling ripped off.  In recent years, Chris has come to Oxford with me, and we’ve booked a room in a hotel a bit further out of town (and therefore at a much more reasonable price). He would do his own thing while I was living it up at the dinner, meet me in the college lodge at 11pm with a pair of comfy shoes for me to change into, and walk me back to the hotel. Then we would spend the following day (invariably a Saturday) mooching around Oxford.

So this year, I had a dilemma. Where could I find that was reasonably priced, and in the centre of Oxford within a short, safe walk stagger of college? I was very pleased when I found a hotel in George Street, less than five minutes walk from college, and for only £69 B&B. Perhaps I should have checked Trip-advisor more carefully – it turned out to be above a sports bar, next to the bus station! I walked round it twice before deciding that I had the address right, and this had to be it.  Sports bars are really not my thing at all!  But my room turned out to be large, clean, and perfectly adequately furnished. And fortunately I was given a key to a (rather dingy) side entrance, which meant that I didn’t have to go in and out through the bar. The room was very noisy though – it overlooked the bus station, and was directly above the bar which was pumping out loud music. I was very pleased that I keep an emergency pair of ear-plugs in my sponge bag for when I’m travelling!

On Saturday, I had bought myself a ticket to an superb exhibition, From Heracles to Alexander,  at the Ashmolean museum. It was full of grave goods from some ancient Macedonian royal tombs, including those of the father and son of Alexander the Great – absolutely stunning gold and silver work, as well as plenty of other fascinating artefacts.

I think my favourite piece was the oak-leaved diadem, shown on the right above, which is made of very fine gold-leaf. There are tiny golden acorns embedded amongst the leaves, on gold wires so fine that the acorns would dance in the slightest breeze. It was found in the grave of a 17-year old royal youth, suspected to be a son of Alexander the Great.

Christopher would have just loved the exhibition, and the subsequent Greek-themed lunch I had in the museum restaurant before catching the train home.

16 05 2011 Gillian Day out Comments Off on A college dinner Permalink

Sorting out the garden

I think this is likely to be a long-running saga, which I shall spread over several posts and probably several months. You have been warned!

view of the terraced garden

This is what my garden looks like currently. It is heavily landscaped, with the first terrace (where this picture was taken) being as high as the house, and two further terraces above there. There are spectacular views over the Herefordshire countryside from the summerhouse on the top terrace. But it is necessary to do much of the gardening up a ladder!

The previous owner was very proud that he designed the landscaping himself, and moving the hillside further away from the house as he did certainly would have made the house lighter and less damp. Unfortunately, we weren’t so keen on the way he actually did the terracing, and Chris and I had a long-term goal to Do Something About It

The problem is the concrete blocks, which you can see all too clearly in the photo. They were made to order for the previous owner, to his own specification. They are about 2’x1′ in size, with holes in them to grow plants through. That is the first problem – I’ve tried for years to find something that is pleasant to look at, preferably evergreen (or at least interesting all year round), and will thrive on a north-facing slope. I’ve planted literally hundreds of alpines – saxifrage and aubretia mostly – but they only took in patches. Trailing periwinkle was another experiment, but only lasted a few seasons. Even ivy gave up and died on me. The only thing that really grows well there (apart from dandelions) seems to be alchemilla mollis (lady’s mantle), which Chris hated vehemently and waged unsuccessful wars against.

The other problem is that the blocks are not in any way fixed in place.They are laid on top of each other, resting against the soil and/or granite underneath, with only friction holding them in place. If, by some miracle, plants do “take” in the holes, then their root-mass grows larger and ends up pushing the blocks out of alignment. So even those plants that do manage to establish themselves have to be strictly culled very few years in order to keep the retaining wall from falling down. Worse,  the blocks are too heavy for me to move on my own. So when a section of wall starts bulging alarmingly, I’ve had to call in the gardener plus a mate and a ladder to maintain it – and that is expensive.

For years Chris and I have been wanting a more stable, lower-maintenance solution that would also be pleasanter to look at all year round.  But we always marked it down as too difficult. We did start trying to do something serious about it this time last year, and asked for opinions from a number of landscape gardeners. But then of course Christopher’s cancer got much worse and we had to put the plans on hold.  I’ve finally decided that I can Stand It No Longer, and my goal over this summer is to re-activate those plans and get it sorted out.

12 05 2011 Gillian garden Comments (4) Permalink

Back to work….

I went back to work on Tuesday after taking over two weeks off over the run of Bank Holidays. On the one hand, it felt odd being back after an extended break, but on the other I was quite pleased to get back to a routine as I’d pretty much had enough of myself after such a long break.

Not that I spent the whole two weeks on my own. Quite apart from the mid-week break in Bath with my parents, and the seemingly endless visits from tradesmen fixing bits of the house, I’d also spent some time catching up with some friends I hadn’t seen for a while. I had Sunday lunch with one school friend and her family (and went for a good long walk on the Malvern Hills in a vain effort to tire out her children!),  a barbecue lunch at the family home of another school friend, had dinner at my favourite pub with a group of friends from work, and met up with several colleagues and ex-colleagues for coffees over the fortnight.

I managed to catch up on my sleep too, and feel more rested than I had before the Easter break. But even so, I’m pleased to have the firm structure back to the day, and something to focus my efforts on, which work gives me.  I’m finding myself quite hard work at the moment and I think another week at home would have been too much of a good thing.

07 05 2011 Gillian status Comments (1) Permalink