Nice People Thread No. 15, a Cyber Summer

PasturesNew

Pyxis wrote: »

Just seems like strange things for kids to fiddle with!

Unless they are pretending they are chariots!

Ben Hur races in wheelie bins!

There are a few attractions:
- something to fiddle with, look at, touch, potentially drag around.
- airborne brick dust on top for writing in.
- something to open, peer inside and see what's in there ... and if it's deemed interesting then who knows...


Simply because something/anything exists is enough for idle children to investigate, poke play around with, drag around, whatever takes their current bored fancy.

For it to be pushed/pulled, or even "pushed from one person to another" are all equally likely.

Pyxis

I don't think I ever played with a bin when I was a child! The lid maybe! Not the actual smelly, dusty bin, though!

Mind you, I suppose I did play with some weird things, including our brand new coal bunker, which I turned into my bijou residence, until my mother rather nastily had it filled with coal!

PasturesNew

Pyxis wrote: »

I don't think I ever played with a bin when I was a child! The lid maybe! Not the actual smelly, dusty bin, though!

They weren't plastic and plonked "exactly where you're playing and bored"; they weren't on wheels.....

These ones aren't that big either, they're the black/narrow sort that if you had a full/stuffed black liner bag full, it'd not fit except at the very very top. They are 140 litres. The recycling ones are bigger (240 litres).

When I was young they were big metal things that were nasty and dirty inside. No liners/no cleaning, all the old fire scrapings went in there too... literally "dust bns"! The bin man would come into your garden, lift it onto his back/shoulder and take it to the bin lorry, empty it and bring it back.

Now they drag it, unopened, to the lorry where a lifting device lifts/tips it .... and if you're not very lucky they give it a "good shove, hoping it'll end up roughly where it started".

zagubov

michaels wrote: »

I agree, even the bedrooms are a bit small and the downstairs accommodation is very disappointing - but if you look at the rest of the street you can see that what you start with is a 'blank canvass' on which you add...and add

I used to work in a pretty upmarket town where developers would buy a house like that and turn it into a little cul-de-sac of terraces with tiny gardens.

As it stands that house is a waste of space. It's got no depth, and seems to be all width as if it's all for show, and it takes up too much of the street. If you're into retro vehicles you could park a post-war bubble-car in the "garage".

If we made our houses deep and tall instead of low and wide, we could worry less about paving over this green and pleasant land.

The house that bugslet's posted is much less impressive for the front, but it's very tardis-y as it's got hidden depths. Love that kind of a place. But by London standards, we could never get that much land to expand into.

vivatifosi

Michaels, I bet that sells to someone from London. At the Odyssey, there was an ad for an estate agent talking about how they advertise their St Albans houses in London.

That's how it is round here. People who find London expensive buy in St Albans, pricing St Albans people out, so they move my way, and the people who can't afford to live here anymore move to Bedfordshire. I'm so glad I'm not a first time buyer. My family are historically from Harpenden, Berkhamsted and Boxmoor, all way too expensive for the young ones to buy in.

zagubov

vivatifosi wrote: »

Michaels, I bet that sells to someone from London. At the Odyssey, there was an ad for an estate agent talking about how they advertise their St Albans houses in London.

That's how it is round here. People who find London expensive buy in St Albans, pricing St Albans people out, so they move my way, and the people who can't afford to live here anymore move to Bedfordshire. I'm so glad I'm not a first time buyer. My family are historically from Harpenden, Berkhamsted and Boxmoor, all way too expensive for the young ones to buy in.

When I first lived in a neighbouring county to you (early 80s), house prices were so cheap that a friend on a £4.9k income could buy a small terraced housewith three years hard scrimping and saving and taking in a lodger.

Then they electrified the BedPan line in the mid-80s and prices just rocketed. I wish I knew how much his house sold for when he moved.

Pyxis

zagubov wrote: »

When I first lived in a neighbouring county to you (early 80s), house prices were so cheap that a friend on a £4.9k income could buy a small terraced housewith three years hard scrimping and saving and taking in a lodger.

Then they electrified the BedPan line in the mid-80s and prices just rocketed. I wish I knew how much his house sold for when he moved.

I had to google Bedpan line!

bugslet

SingleSue wrote: »

James has got through to round 3 in one of his graduate scheme applications....this is for a major software company that if successful, would see him in America this time next year.

So far, he is one of 3 put through the next round.

That is just brilliant news, fingers and paws crossed for him:T

Pyxis

I must admit that it wasn't that long ago that I discovered that on some lines you could get on a train from oop north somewhere and travel to London, then cross London without leaving the train.

(I can't remember which line it was, but maybe the bedpan one).

What an improvement on travelling into a mainline London station then having to struggle with luggage across London on the tube, or get a taxi, to another mainline station in order to travel out the other side.

PasturesNew

In 1970 my parents moved from a council house to buying one.

25 years later they retired/moved away from the area.

With hindsight, their alternative lives could've been:

- buy the council house, stay there forever, sell 40 years later and sell for £320k
- buy the private house, stay there forever, sell 40 years later and sell for £290k

Unfortunately, the route they went down ended up to sell for £190k.

If they'd stayed in the council house and just bought it, we'd have been "£130k better off" 40 years later.