Full Metal Wheelbarrow

As promised, pictures of our camping trip at the weekend.

The special thing about the tent is that rather than folding poles, it has inflatable beams which you blow up with a pump. I took a video of Rob doing this, but it’s currently too large to upload to Vimeo so I need to poke it with a stick and make it fit. If and when I manage this I will post it here just in case anyone is curious ;).

( “Camping!” )

Because I am a nosy blighter, who likes to see what other people’s houses look like, I’ve been browsing online property listings lately.

A few observations….


- it’s surprising how often houses which are otherwise generously proportioned have a broom-cupboard for a kitchen.

- those houses which do have a decent sized kitchen are often badly undersupplied in the matter of cupboards therein (this is more easily remedied of course).


- there was one bungalow which had the kitchen next to one of the bedrooms and the dining room the other side of that. This strikes me as a bad idea.

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- a large quantity of houses which have ensuite bathrooms seem to have them attached to tiny bedrooms rather than the master. And a surprising number with ensuite …utility rooms. Oookaaay….

- and then there’s the one with the utility room opening off the ensuite bathroom….no, I have no clue.

- I was also surprised by the sheer number of houses which have no bath at all, only a shower (or several).

- what sort of lunatic thinks it’s a good idea to build houses with flat roofs in this climate?

- Likewise, what sort of idiot thinks tiles make a good worktop surface? (They might, if they didn’t have quarter-inch grout lines between them - as it stands, it makes the whole thing much more work to clean than it needs to be…)

- one really annoying thing is when a house is listed as having X number of bedrooms, but it turns out on detailed reading that it actually has X - Y bedrooms because Y bedrooms are in a separate cottage/annex/flat. Not helpful.

- I’m sorry, but even if it’s right next door, if you have to come out of the bedroom door and through the bathroom door to get to said bathroom, I don’t see how you can call it an ensuite. Words mean things!

- it strikes me as a trifle odd to describe a castle as a “link-detached house”….

- and bordering on dishonest to describe something as a “four-bedroomed house” when in fact it’s a church with planning permission…. Methinks the word “potential” should be in there somewhere at least.

- Yes, it’s nice to have a door from the house into the garage. But from a bedroom????

- how did anyone ever think that a burgundy bathroom suite was a good idea?


- When a house has “outbuildings” why do they hardly ever show the insides of them or show them on the floor plans? Some of us have large quantities of bicycles and garden impedimenta and these things are important to us….

- this one was in Norfolk, so maybe it really did have a “Three Cart Bay Garage”…..

- so many floorplans which are too tiny to see and not enlargeable. Not sure what use that’s supposed to be. Still slightly more use than the one where they’d failed to upload it all and it was a blank page instead though. And then there was the purple one….

- If you’re including a floorplan in your listing for a house with more than one floor, it’s a good idea to check that you haven’t posted the floorplan for only one of them….

- A plan of the area showing the house location is not a floorplan.

- A written description of the rooms in the house is not a floorplan either.

- there are an amazing number of properties described as “bungalows” which have extensive upstairses. I know dormer bungalows are a thing, but if it’s got three or four rooms upstairs, it ceases to be a bungalow, IMO. Again with the words and their meaning things.

- several listings which have more photos of the outside of the house than the inside. Sometimes *no* photos of the inside at all. Perhaps I am a nasty suspicious person, but this makes me wonder what it is that they don’t want to show you…

- estate agents have no grasp whatever of the proper use of apostrophes. And don’t know the difference between “discreet” and “discrete”, apparently.

- some of them aren’t very good at numbers either - the number of listings wherein the number of bedrooms varies between the headline and the description is rather worrying.

- “We would politely ask potential purchasers requesting to view the property to discuss with the staff the reason for the bungalow coming onto the market. “ Well, that’s not ominous at all….




I’m beginning to have more sympathy for the finicky people on property shows…..