Computer virus warning

I have just had to restore my laptop to factory settings with all the attendant hassle that entails because of something nasty that arrived on my computer which Mc Afee failed to pick up. So here is advanced warning for you:

There is a legitimate programme called Microsoft Securities which is an anti virus check. However, there is also a fake version of this circulating which looks very convincing unless you know the real programme.

Yesterday I do remember getting one of those annoying pop up adverts  telling me I had won a Mini Cooper, which I closed without actually clicking on any of their buy now buttons, assuming it was fake. But I think that is where the infection came from.

When I logged on to the laptop today I got a warning screen from 'Microsoft Securities' saying that a Trojian horse had been downloaded and I needed to scan to clear it off. Now, I was surprised at this becuase I had not been aware that I had Microsoft Securities. But this was before I researched and found it to be a programme you buy and, it being supposedly Microsoft, and my laptop having come with all kinds of stuff I didn't always take much note of, I can see how it would be plausible. In any event suspicious or not I could not get further into my computer without clicking on scan now.

When you do that it gives a list of about 30 antivirus programmes which are purportedly checking for a solution. On the results page many come up as having nothing. Five do and you are invited to free install them. Alarm bells rang everywhere  at this point becuase (a) Mc Afee, which I do have, was said not to have a solution. (b) it is unilkely that all the ones who do are free and (c) one of the the free ones is called Red Cross and there is no way the humanitarian organaistion would allow a software company to be using their name. So I went no further.

My research showed that the offered programmes are of course fakes themselves and are damaging. I did manage to get Mc Afee to scan my whole computer but it did not show up the fake Mc Afree Securities even though by then I had researched it on Den's laptop and had found out what was going on.

But even though I didn't download anything it killed my computer and I had to recover it back to factory settings.

So learn a lesson or two from me:

1. Don't fall for this scam. 

2. Then, before you get attacked, go and back up your computer to an external drive now. I have done that but not since we moved so some photos have gone but nothing major thank goodness..... and some photos are on the blog anyway, but not all my Festival of Quilts ones! (And there was an hour or two of desperately trying to remember where we had unpacked the hard drive to!)

3. Then back up frequently.

4.  Ensure your McAfee or Norton or similar is up to date. 

5. Buy a storage box and dedicate it to your recovery discs and discs of bought computer programmes so you can put them all back on again speedily.

6. Go on line now and search the website of your computer's manufacturer for instructions on how to recover your computer to factory settings and print it out - unless you are sure you will have access to an unaffected laptop to look it up when you come to need it.

7. And, if you ever think there is a chance you have been compromised, go and change all your online banking passwords at once as an added security.

Then reflect that, actually, its quite nice to have a computer free of all the junk that ends up on them after a while!

Interactive kitchen

Wow! thank you all so much for  your response so far to my kitchen advice plea. It is all very useful indeed.

Just one more question. Dennis made the mistake of leaving half way through our joint internet shopping session tonight to go and watch football. that was fine by me - I am happy to do the research and then report back with options.  But he has to be aware that if he leaves me and I fall in love in his absence, all his budgetary caution shall be scattered to the wind.

I found THE tap.* Just the one I was searching for. Silly price but I am in love.

I was searching for a handsome tap with a sleek pull out hose with a rounded control that was centrally placed and which swivelled and had a good sense of humour and was non-smoking  - harder than you think. This Franke one was one of three that fit the bill but - oh be still my beating heart - it is black. So it's all matchy-matchy with the black sink and black microwave and black extractor and... you get the idea! I like matching and I didn't even know you could get black taps.

So on colour alone it was a must buy.

But - and here is where I need your help again. It has an added feature, as you can see in the picture of the steel version below. LED lights in the spray. Now this is surely extremely cool and, as I assume Swiss precsion means this is achieved without the risk of electrocution, amazingly clever.

But why on earth do I need LED lights in my tap spray?

* I know, this used to be a quilt blog. Give me time and I promise quilt show photos from the US.

Pulling your weight

At midnight last night, as I found myself, in my PJ's measuring packets of cornflakes and quaker oats with a builders tape measure I came to a conclusion. I have had many emails and blog comments saying how much you are looking forward to seeing our house develop and how much fun it will be to watch the process. Which is great. Because I am having great fun too and I am all for sharing the joy. But you know, along with the fun goes the work and, well, you might all be having vicarious fun but I don't see any of you measuring the circumference of a tin of beans for me, do I? So I decided that I shall tap into my reader resource a bit more.

Tell me a good and a bad thing about your kitchen. Or more if you like. What do you love - be it an applicance, a colour, a fancy gadget for turning tomatoes into swans - whatever. What would you not be without that you use all the time? What makes you happy about your kitchen? And what don't you like? What little thing niggles and annoys you. What would you change if you could or what mistake did you make when you fitted your kitchen? Or maybe tell me what amazing thing you saw in a shop that you would love to have in your kitchen. That way I can ammass all your wisdom and apply it to maximise good design and minimise regrets.

And in return? Well I shall keep amusing you with tales like how the electrician came back today. And told us that the metal lights in the bathroom - you know, that room with all the steam and water in - no earth wire. Oh, and the shower is illegal. And you know how he was in the house to do the extra sockets in the dressing room becuase the fitted wardrobes are coming soon because all my clothes on the temporary rail fell on my head.... We do realise that if we fit them he will have to unfit them to do the electrics for the kitchen below? Hence why the kitchen gets done soon. And while he was at it he told us that to rewire all our exceedingly dodgy sockets and lighting fixtures he needs to take the flooring of the upstairs out and really we need to move out of the usptairs for three days.

Problem? Not at all. I am going to give a key to the electrician and move out to California. And when I come back I will not longer have to wonder whether naked flame candles are a more or less risky alternative to my light switches..

Oh and in case, you were wondering about the cereal packet measuring. I was almost asleep when it occurred to me that if we got said electrican to move a light switch then, instead of leaving a small gap between a wall and a run of cabinetry in the kitchen ( to allow us to get our hands down the side of the cabinets to get to the switch) as the planner had suggested, then, as long as I change the radiator at the other end of the run to one 10 mm narrower we could swap the 300mm pull out larder to a 500mm. Was it worth the effort Dennis asked. Would we get all that much more in or would we just have usless space around what we would put in the 300mm cupboard? Don't really know. Turns out the answer is about 55 packets of Quaker Oats.

Accident

It was an accident. I swear on my fabric stash it was.

You see, everything is temporary in our house at the moment and that includes the shade on my bedside lamp. It is slightly too big but it does a good job of temporarily replacing the one that got broken in the packing.  Only, it being slightly too big, when I caught it with my hand as I tried to put the light out, it slipped and overbalanced the lamp base. Which toppled onto the water carafe, which poured its contents over the radio alarm clock.

Now I did scoop it up quickly, but the first dribbles seem to have seeped into the base. And caused the radio to come on. Which ought to be a good sign of me not having drowned the thing. Save that it was on even though it was turned off. And would not turn off, whatever buttons I pressed.  Radio 4, on and on and on. (Dennis likes us to wake to the Today Programme. For myself, I would choose something more serene or upbeat. But I will give you that having to listen to John Humphries interupting and hectoring a politician who is intent on ignoring both question and reality in their desperate attempt to convince me of the sense of whatever inane policy they dreamt up overnight does get me up quickly. Newshound Dennis manages to snooze serenely through the first twenty minutes or so of the baracking and slimey avoidance).   Of course, the radio turned off when I did the electrical equivalent of smacking its bottom for tantruming and pulled its plug out. But when I plugged it back in, it started again. Not good.

But not a disaster, because a little while ago my Dad won an ipod docking station/ alarm clock and a large bar of chocolate in a raffle. Dad having no real need of (or idea what to do with) a docking station, I was given it the day before this happened. My ipod-less sister got the chocolate.  So I get up and go and get it. It has four pages of instructions. All of which have large simple diagrams for 'quick set up'. None of which tell me how to tune the radio. And of course I am only reading the instructions after I have spent time trying to fathom it out myself. It suggests I download the manual online. At gone midnight? Not good.

But not a disaster, because it is after all, a docking station. So I dock my itouch, set the alarm and go to sleep.

And at 6.41 am ( because this, like all other digital clocks you or I have ever set, skips the time you are actually trying to set it to by one minute) I start gradually to rise out of my sleep, eased out of it painlessly by  the gentle and interesting tones from the ipod. I snuggle down and let myself have a couple more minutes to enjoy....

Or I would have done if Dennis had not, within five seconds of it going off, sat bolt upright and demanded, "What is that?"

That, my dear Westminster-Village-wannabe-resident-political-conflict -thriving husband of many years, that is Annies Smith's quilting podcast.

It was, I swear on my stash, an accident.

PS. By the time I got home he had fixed the original alarm clock and asked me,"What is Patchwork Tsushin anyway?

Going backwards to go forwards

You remember how I had  taken over this warm, decorated, equipped dining room as my studio?

And how I was dissatisfied so we moved so I could get a better studio?

Well, this is it.

(Gerrie you asked to see a photo of the guest room. It's the same place.)

The plan is that next week my brother-in-law and husband will be hiring a van and going to my former barrister's chambers to retrive my desk and book cases which will go in here as a temporary studio solution. In around March/April we anticipate starting work in here to create me a dedicated studio and second bathroom. Then the temporary studio becomes the guest room.

Well when I say we start work, I mean the builder starts work. After he does our bathroom and kitchen. And finishes the neighbours loft conversion - he waved at me from their roof today.

Spending some of my time as I do hearing Small Claim cases, I am aware that choosing a builder can be a tricky business. No-one knowingly chooses a cowboy so how do you know if your builder will do a good job? Well recommendation is a good start - this builder has already completed a full refurb of the bungalow opposite us including a loft conversion there too. But I do think gut instinct and an assessment of the character of the person is part of it.

This builder came to visit to take his first look at the jobs we had planned. He walked into the lounge and stopped talking when he saw my quilt over the sofa.
"Did you do that?"
"Yup"
He picked it up, examined the back.
"That's really neat machine quilting. " He fingered it some more. "And these feathers are really good. I like the colour combination."
Now excuse my total prejudice but I didn't expect that. Turns out he used to be a sail maker. And he gets why I need two studios.  (The second will be the converted garage which will be a smaller wet dying and printing studio but thats 18 months to 2 years down the line when the rest of the house is done.)

I think he's worth a punt on don't you?!

Bath revisited

During my blogland absence we snuck in a trip to Bath. As we stay in this flat at least three/four weeks a year I have become lax about photos as it is all so familiar, but this time I took some especially for you.

At the moment Bath is full of Lions. First these statuary kind. Most are actually quite naff but this was the prettiest.

And this the one that made us laugh the most. Isn't he delightfully arrogant?

Then there were the human kind of Lions.Although not all humans pictured are Lions a goodly number were. Applause and impressed acknowledgement will be lavished upon any North American reader who can tell me (a) what a Lion is in this context and (b) what this position is called.

When I was a child I liked to sit in the bottom of my wardrobe with my library books. The flat in Bath has two perfectly good sofas but my penchant for squeezing into small spaced to read/write has not diminished!

Good and bad news

The good news - finally (but not until Talk Talk reduced Dennis to tears with their appalling service and need to spend hours on the phone to call centres who did anything but what they said they would do) the home wifi is working! I am back in blogland!

The bad news. The electrician came to check the electrics in the new house. His exact comment on this socket? "Bloody hell. Don't use this one!"

His comment on our fuse box? "This is twenty years old. Its working fine but it will go eventually. And when it goes, normally I would say you will never get a part for it, but actually I've got an old one for parts in my garage. And you know where I got that from? Its the one I took out of your last house."

Well, its nice to recycle isn't it?!

Move photos

No, still no broadband, but at least I have finally found time to tranfser  a few photos to a memory stick and bring them to work for a lunch time posting. I know nearly a month after moving these are a little out of date but these are all I have with me so be greatful ! :)

Imitially my thrifty little sister gave us some grief about wasting money by employing a removal company and not just getting a hire van and doing some work ourselves. When she rocked up at 3pm and saw these vans I think she understood!

And besides. It was quite hard work watching.

A few snaps before we started to dump boxes everywhere gives you an idea of some of the downstairs space:

Kitchen: to be replaced very soon I hope.

Dining room leading to sun lounge (through 60's arch to be squared off soone I hope and with oh so dated wood pannelling!), leading through those white double doors ( which for some inexplicable reason only have handles on one side) to the lounge

Oh aren't empty rooms so interesting?!

Out the sun room you come to the garden

From upstairs you get views

Although these have now disappeared. I fear they may be steak.

Little sister, despite her scorn turned out to be quite helpful in getting us settled, scrubbing away happily.

Even that day we had produce from the garden

and one of my first acts in the house was to make this delicious plum cake from Nigella's Domestic Goddess Book

And yes, I know and no I could not wait!

As I expect you can tell, the house needs work in every room so we shall be doing bits as we go along starting as soon as we stop going away for holidays (Bath for the next fortnight and California for me in the first fortnight of October, Ireland for Dennis. And don't be taking his side on that one. It was his choice!).

We are glad that the frst task - due to be completed in three weeks - was always going to be replacement of the hot water system with a combi-boiler as this week the hotwater stopped heating then the pipes started to make alarming screaming sounds that caused us to have to stop even trying to heat the water. Clearly Something Is Not Right!

I have inspiration for all this work in the form of my old school friend ( well, she is not old, not much older than me anyway, but you know what I mean!) who now uses the moniker Working Mum. She is posting the before and after photos of her house renovation on her blog  and I am glad to say is visiting soon when I hope she will reassure me that there is life after inherited white anaglypta wallaper and faded mottled brown carpets everywhere!

We are in...

... but the broadband is not on. (I am not going there - you can guess  that story!) And because I keep forgetting to put photos on a memory stick and bring them to work I finally decided to just to blog with stolen pictures and fill you in on mine later.

The essence of the broader picture is that the house move went pretty smoothly and we have unpacked as much as we can given that we have hardly any storeage until we go and buy it all having left all our fitted storeage behind. The only slight annoyance was that we arrived to find that the vendors had removed the one set of 'fitted' wardrobes that existed. I am not going to get annoyed and lawyerish about it because (a) they were nice people (b) they were elderly and confused when they moved - we know that becuase the male vendor rang on the day on the move to say that he was really sorry but there was a water leak. This he had discovered when giving his final water meter reading and the company spotted that it was way too high and that it could only be explained by a mains leak. We were told to check the reading again a few hours later when we got in and ring the company ourselves to sort out the repairs.

 Right. Great.

So we read the number - miles lower than the one he gave and, as it turned out, exactly what it should have been. We think he gave the gas reading to the water company...

But the other reason I am not fussing is that I planned to use that room as a dressing room and eventually - in about 18 months to get new wardrobes anway. Until then eveyone said I would find the moving woardrobes very handy. Ugly. but useable.

Right. Two of them collapsed completely in the move. So I bought some tidy rails

There is a reason that they photograph these long rails with two flimsy items of clothing on.

That is all they will hold without bending and swaying like palms in Katrina.

Having arranged five of them packed with suits on wooden hangers around the room, I started to put my shoes on the bottom rack and eneded up with two complete rails of clothes on my back as the rails collapsed.

Dennis knows his duty (and an opportunity for revenge when he sees it) and rushed for the camera. But sadly I had left it on and the battery was flat so he was unable to record my prone and covered position for your amusement.

Lets just say that renovation plans have been revised and we are going to order new wardrobes on Saturday, having persuaded the manager of a local shop to extend the sale just for me since I could not go in last weekend when it actually finished, as I was at Festival of Quilts. Which of course is a whole other blog post... for when I remember to bring photographs to work....

This is the range I have chosen. No bed in ths room just an array of storeage with mirrors positioned so that the room neatly doubles as a yoga studio and so that the view of fields and cows is doubled.

Last blog post ever....

...from this house at least.

Tomorrow the phone is cut off and we move. And broadband is not reconnected at the new place until 17th so there will be a blog hiatus.

But I thought that my last post ought to have quilting content so here is the entirety of my quilting output for the last six weeks:

Having finished my four purple and yellow Twelve by Twelve quilts and despite having a truly pathetic collection of yellow to start with I still had scraps.  I also had a cold and was frustrated at not having space really do do anthing that required spreading out  and not much energy to do anything important anyway. I decided just to stitch and see where I got to.  For comfort.

Pretty soon the sneezing started and inspiration struck.

The quilt top has been left out through all the packing, spray basted and ready for quilting in the hope that I might find some spare time.

Never happened. So it shall be a transition quilt.

Meanwhile the packing is completed - but not without a hint of irony along the way.

And of course a last post from here would not be complete without a contribution from Dennis. I could tell you about the email I got a work that started with him digging a rose bush up and ended with him washing blood from the living room walls. But pictures tell a story so much better. And often it is not the big dramatic things that fox my dear husband but the simple ones:

Not exhausted, but laughting in despair at his own latest predicament.

"Why does it always happen to me?"

Moving house with Wallander

I would have liked to blog about the incident with the desk last night. The incident in which my dear husband crawled under a bespoke desk that is screwed together underneath, took an electric screwdriver to it and removed all the screws and was then mightily surprised when a plank fell on his head.


But, on consideration I do not think it is good for a marriage for blog posts to constantly point  one's spouse's failings. So I shall not talk about that. Or indeed the self-defensive comment he made some hours later:
"You know when that plank fell on my head?"
"Yes Dear"
"It made me realise that when people say you are thick as a plank, planks aren't really that thick."
"No dear. That's why the phrase is actually 'Thick as two short planks'
Silence.

So anyway,  I shall gloss over that incident and focus instead on the extraordinary linguistic skills of my husband.

Really. He is a natural linguist. Officially he speaks only French, Spanish and Catalan. (The latter being useful only for getting locals prices in markets in certain regions of Spain or negotiating with ETA terrorists.) and reads Biblical Hebrew and Greek. In reality he picks up pretty much anything with no apparent learning process. So, for example there was the time we were in Prague when he picked up a paper in Czech in a local cafe, and read a review of a great exhibition opening on the very day we left. Or the time we were in Berlin and he made me do all the talking on account of my German A level 20 years ago, and his supposed lack of Germanic prowess, but was then caught out when he started telling me all kind of interesting facts about some composer he had found out by reading a German broadsheet!

So at the moment he is learning Swedish. This he is learning from subtitled episodes of Wallander. And honestly, after just two and a half episodes watched, I do think it is impressive that he can form grammatically correct sentences. I do. It is much more than I can do.

All I am saying is that, given his Northern Irish Accent and our current house related shopping plans, it is perhaps not terribly useful to be able to say,

"Hi! I am happy. There are two tons of explosives in aisle three of Ikea."

Packing

Man box stacking.

Girl box stacking  with man accessory

Potfest

Last week I went to Potfest at Hutton in the Park in Cumbria with Mum. This is a series of marquees with stalls of ceramic artsists. I didn't take photos of the items for sale but over an the lawn leading to the cafe they set up a traders competition. This years theme was Shrines and Altars and you get to vote for your top three. Mine:

Ist: Memento Mori by Nigel Edmonson

2nd "Temple" By Gary Uttley

But then, I am rather partial to the work of Polly and Gary Uttley. I own on eof their peices based on India textiles whihc I comnmssioned some 3 years ago after seeing their stall and I was interetsed to see their new 'Patchwork' work based on sampler of all the techniques they use.  I can see a bit of this drifting into the new house.

I also liked this bowl which Polly let me photo so that when I am ready to buy one I can email it back to her so she knows what I am talking about.

Or maybe I'll find a place for this large vase

Later in the afternoon Mum took me shopping for a present she wanted to buy me for my 40th. In fact I was a lucky, lucky girl as she splashed out not only on this bracelet which she has already spotted and took me specifically to see. We ordered it in yellow gold though becuase I don't like white gold. (Its a bad photo because it is a photo from the brochure).

The ring also needed to be resized and so I will collect them both from a branch near to work in a few

weeks.

 On Sunday we went to the reknown Sharrow Bay hotel for a Michelin starred lunch. This is the hotel where Sticky Toffee Pudding was invented and of course it was still on the menu. Although in my view it is still not a patch on the sublime and unbeatable Cartmel Village Sticky Toffee Pudding

Back at Mum and Dad's....can you see evidence of the different between my neatnik husband and me?

The shameful thing is that the bed  with all my rubbish on it  actually his bed!

Our phone

Our phone. In the middle of our house. Our house, in the middle of our street... come on - sing along. Our house....

Only of course it isn't going to be our house for much longer. And you know what that means... yup, a long tale follows... ready?
I promise my next post will be about art but bear with me while I rant amuse you

So, I get home and Dennis informs me I have to ring Talk Talk and get them to transfer our phone number the 1.6 miles down the road to the new house.
I have to do it because it has taken him 5 and a half hours and a drive to a different town to get much of the money we need to buy the house transferred into the solictors account, an ordeal the Alliance and Leicester subjected him to, which actually reduced him to tears, and he cannot face another call centre.

So I ring Talk Talk.  In India. They cannot simply transfer our name to the Talk Talk account the sellers have, the line must be disconnected and we get a new number and a new contract. We cannot keep our own number. Inconvenient but, as we keep getting calls for Asda supermarket anyway, maybe not fatal. What did annoy me was that it would take 28 days from the move to get broadband back.
Why? It is there already. Why can't they do it quicker?
"Ah. Miss Helen. We are getting this question regularly and it is because our engineers say that to do it ever so quickly will cause inconveniences to you that they are not prepared to have you suffer."
I am not going there.
I hang up to consider my options with other providers.

I consider the options and decide actually Talk Talk are well priced.
I ring back and get a South African call centre. Richard not only has a lovely accent but tells me all the sellers and we have to do is fill in a transfer of ownership form and guides me to it on the website. Fabulous. I ring the sellers and persuade the elderly and over cautious seller that it is safe to do that. I email the form to them.
They ring back. They rang Talk Talk to try to do this and were told, no. The line has to be disconnected and a new number given but it will not take 28 days. She is shocked that we were told that, the sellers say. It will take 2 or 3  days if we ring now.

Now. I don't know about you but I get very annoyed when I get given three versions of events.

I ring back and get South Africa again. I ask for a manager. I am required to go through the whole shebang again. I am given both option a and b above by the same person. I point out that both cannot be right. They are entirely different and I need to know which applies to me. I ask for a manager. He tells me I don't need a manager. I need to listen becuase I am not listening to what I am being told.

I don't quite shout.  But the response begains with, "I BEG your pardon?"  I stress in very certain terms that I am a lawyer, that I know exactly what I have been told and that I am not only listening very, very carefully, I am making a note of the evidence. Um, conversation. I. Want. A. Manager. Now. Please. If that is at all possible. No offence to you.

I am pretty sure I hear him drop the phone at the word lawyer and that he didn't hear the rest. I get a manager. Who listens and explains. The old term and conditions require the line to be disconnected. But those have been changed for people moving to a Talk Talk house. Some staff are giving out old information. He apologised. Nicely. In a lovely accent.
It brought back happy memories of eating ostritch in Cape Town.

Fine. So lets move on to the new terms shall we.

All I have to do is fill in a form. But he will note the account now so that a manager has started the process of the change of ownership.
Thank you very much.
I give him the new phone number.
No. He says. Not a talk talk account.
It is. The information form you get with the contract of sale says it is. I have been talking to the sellers. They assure me it is. They have just been talking to you about the account you say they don't have.
Ah, he says. Maybe they are with one of the companies in the Talk Talk group that is not actually Talk Talk but which sell Talk Talk branded products.

I ring the vendors. "They say you are not Talk Talk,  but you are aren't you? Thats what you put on the forms." There is a little pause.
"Well, kind of.  Its Tiscali I think but we get a Talk Talk logo on the bill."

I give up. I let them disconnect the line and book me an engineer to arrive 5 days after I move in. I pay them an adminstration fee to do so. All I want is to have my tea and watch Grey's Anatomy on TV.
Is that asking too much?

On why I do not have time to quilt..

The house move is (touch wood) coming up on 11th August.
I pressed for a date so I could book time off and eventually my solicitor gave us the 11th as 'an agreed provisional date, subject to contract to be treated with caution.'
It is a good job I speak fluent lawyer!

So, on a practical level we are at the packing up stage. Or I would be if I didn't keep getting sidetracked with legal niceties;

We got the Land Registry deeds and there is a restrictive covenant that prevents the construction of a building or structure within 20 yards of the rear boundary. i.e. right where the studio is going. Ah.


Turns out you can insure against the risk that someone will come along and ask you to take it down. As the beneficiary is a dissolved company the risk is not high, but it still exists as they might have sold the benefit on. It will  cost about £500- £800 if I insure pre-build and less if I build and wait a year then insure, as they insurance company suggested. Right. So you want me to be uninsured for the riskiest period so that the premiums reduce. And the point of that is....?!! We are shopping around for quotes. I did suggest that I could always convert the loft as an alternative to a garden room studio anyway. Dennis became quite firm that I deserved a place out of the house for all my threads. I'd like to think he was thinking of me and validating my art, but somehow....

Then today I arrived home to find that the solicitors have done all the checks and searches on the house. It is not going to fall down a mineshaft and it does not have Bhopal like contamination in the ground. It does however have Chancel Repair Liability.

What? I am pretty sure I never heard of that when I was doing my 6 months conveyancing stint – and as I did my own conveyancing  for this house while I was in that post I was actually paying attention to my training.

Turns out that under medieval law if you owned land within the parish of a certain kind of church the parishioners were liable to pay half of the repair costs of the church and the rector had to pay the other half from the tithes. This liability attaches to the land and it appears that we are within a risk area for this.

Now you might think that this is nothing but in 2003 there was a House of Lords case where a couple who inherited a farm with this liability were clobbered for £196,000. As they were daft enough to litigate it to the House of Lords it also cost them over £250,000 in costs. As a result it has become a negligence issue for the solicitors not to search to see if there is a risk. And of course becuase that was so in the news, parochial councils are now aware that there might be a better way to raise money for the spire than coffee mornings.You can  insure against this risk. It is £15 for a basic search to see if you are in a risk area –that’s what we have. You can then pay £100 to do a full search to see if you have an actual risk and what proportion of the cost you might be liable for – although that would not help as even if the land is now in thousands of parcels apparently the church can just ask one party to pay it all! If you do that check though and there is a risk the insurance premiums rise because of course the risk has juts become a whole lot more certain. To insure the liability for £250,000 with a policy you can pass on to your successor is £145.88 to be insured for perpetuity or £100.88 for 25 years.... so of course you just pay up. I am finding this all terribly interesting. D is just bemused. (his word not mine). It has however proved an excuse to avoid packing in favour of an hour's internet research.

I rang the vendors to ask if by chance they had a policy. They bought in 1970 something when no one was aware of this so they don’t but they did invite us around to meet the neighbours over drinks and nibbles on Monday – isn’t that nice?

And finally I solved the T-mobile problem. Rather than a £35 iphone contract which is what I was begging them to give me. I have put my SIM into a £3.95 Virgin  pay as you go. When  ny contract runs out I am going to sign up for a £15 per month contract with a free Android smart phone and buy an I touch. I get everything I need technology wise and save £350. Yahboo sucks to T-Mobile.

PS The photo is not my parish church. It is Salisbury Cathedral. But it was the only copyright free photo I could quickly find. But imagine what it would cost to replace that roof!

PPS As I write Dennis has been looking at the cost of redirecting mail. They charge per surname not per address and of course I use my maiden name so we pay twice..... shall I just drain all my blood out now ready for moving date?

PPPS I was about to post this and D looked over. What happens to the chancel liabity, he asked, if the Church of England is disestablished?  How should I know? Only an Irishman.... I did ask him a little later what we were going to do for tea. "I don't know," he said, "Can I take out an insurance policy to cover it?