Mis-advised

I got a letter from the freeholder yesterday. She wants to carry out lots of maintenance to the property, which is fine, but she seems to want to charge us for various things that to my mind are for each individual owner to pay for rather than us all contribute. So things like the painting of people’s back doors or window frame. We are responsible for sorting out and paying for double glazing etc for ourselves, but people who haven’t done this and have let their windows deteriorate appear only to have to pay a sixth of the charge of maintaining their own windows, as we then seem to all be required to pay for their laxness. This doesn’t make sense to me...

I read this story on the BBC. Basically there is a woman who knits jackets for battery hens. I actually know someone who does that. The woman I know takes in battery hens that would be destroyed and she makes little fleecy jackets for them because they don’t have many feathers and to help them build up their calcium levels she feeds them freshly prepared porridge each morning and puts raisins in it as well for a bit of extra sustenance. She also has two ancient tortoises and lots of guinea pigs – the latter being due to the guinea pigs sharing a cage for a while because she had been assured that they were both male. It seems she was mis-advised.