I finally met my freeholder yesterday – and it turned out to be a remarkably pleasant experience. When G was off sick on Friday a man came round who wanted to read the gas meter at the empty flat. He tried to put the card through the door but he said the letterbox had been sealed, so he insisted on G taking the card, despite protests. I saw the freeholder was about yesterday morning so I went round to give her the meter reading card – to which she told me that, as far as she was aware, there was no gas to the property so it would be quite hard to read the meter anyway! We then had a bit of a chat and she apologised for where the skip was and that she had been rather lax about getting things done, but said that this was now going to change. She then took me through all the things they were planning on doing to the property as a whole (rather than the flat she owns) and it sounds as though they have lots of helpful things planned.
She also told me that the other flat she owns (she owns two of the six flats where I live) is a big problem because the people who live there will not answer their door, pay rent or respond to letters. It means they can’t carry out any of their legal obligations as landlords etc and so will have to take legal advice to see what to do. She also said that the man who lives there had left her a message saying he no longer lived there. Except he does and the freeholder knows full well that he does – as does his wife, who presumably he wants to take all the responsibility for dealing with the problems, as he didn’t say she had moved out. Charming.
An old boss contacted me on Friday. We haven’t spoken in several years, although we do exchange Christmas cards. She is actually retired, but does special projects sometimes. She wants me to help her with a major project she is taking on. I would be really interested in doing it, but it involves persuading my manager to let me do less hours in my normal job, so that I can do this other work. It probably isn’t a great time to be asking to do this, for a whole variety of reasons, but I’ll see what he makes of it. I did mention it to him briefly on Friday, and he was open to the idea, but the timings on it are now rather different having gone through all the details on Saturday and he might not be quite so keen now. I would really like to work for my old boss again, even if on a short term project. She was the best boss I have had (even though my current boss is really good) and it would be a same to miss out. But there would be lots of logistics to work out, so we’ll see what happens. So today I have to put a case to my boss, as tonight I need to be able to give a good indication of if I am going to be able to do this. Time to be brave.
6 comments:
Well, I hope for your sake that her plans materialise. Our landlady had plans. I gather she still has them. Nothing actually put into motion though...
Blue Soup - yes I do worry that she has found a new enthusiasm that will wear off. But as she owns two of the flats (and I think has a new husband) hopefully she will find enough reason to keep going with it...
Hope you're enjoying the snow. I didn't make it into work in the end.
Good luck with the project.
LKSN - Thank. I didn't make it into work but I did talk to my boss about it on the phone. He seemed ok-ish with the idea, but also a bit concerned. We're going to talk about it again when we are both in the office...
Hope all is well.
Hope you get to do the project.
Oh and tell G to eat more fruit and vegetables!
Kahless - I don't think there is a practical way to do the project. My boss would have tried to do what he could but there was no way to make the timings work out unfortunately. Disappointing.
G is normally good at eating fruit and veg but has been a bit lax recently. I'll have a word...
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