Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.
Posted: May 20th, 2011 | Author: admin | Filed under: Miscellaneous | 2 Comments »
You might remember earlier in the year that I wrote about a project being undertaken at the University of Brighton to rebuild an eco house first built by Grand Designs’ Kevin McCloud live on Channel 4 in 2008. (http://blog.thefutureperfectcompany.com/2011/02/09/help-build-a-grand-design-from-as-little-as-2/)
I am pleased to report that good progress is being made. Planning permission has been granted by a very enthusiastic Brighton & Hove City Council and Mears Group are about to start laying the foundations.
This is a fantastic project on many levels. First off, as an eco project this is an examplar, a project which as Kevin McCloud says, will demonstrate “the viability of locally sourced materials in meeting and challenging a serious threat, which is that of climate change. It is not just about the process of putting it together. It’s also about the lessons learnt from the methods of construction, the materials and the lifecycle analysis of those materials”.
Within the University the techniques and methods tested and pioneered through the building of the house, some of which were not available in 2008, will feed into research and teaching and ultimately contribute to the knowledge of the entire construction industry.
But this is not an experimental building in the middle of a research park miles from anywhere. This building is being constructed in the very heart of Brighton within a University which has always championed public access and taken very seriously its connections and responsibilities to the City in which it is located. So not only will the contractors and staff and students from across the University have access to the project, local schools and other communities will also be able to get involved.
This is a project with real passion for the people involved as well as for the architecture. Mears Group, for instance, agreed to take on the foundations not only because it gives them the opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to sustainable materials and low carbon building but also because it gives their apprentices, many of whom have not achieved academically, a glimpse into the life of a University with the possibility that one of them might then be inspired to study for a degree in architecture.
A great project all round. And you can contribute to this particular Grand Design from as little as £2. For more details of how you can get involved visit http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/business-and-community/the-house-that-kevin-built/funding-for-brightons-thtkb
I shall keep you posted!
Posted: March 2nd, 2011 | Author: admin | Filed under: Miscellaneous | Comments Off
Now, I am a bit of a connoisseur when it comes to all things chocolate and today I was treated to the most wonderful sea salted caramel pecan brownie from Paul A Young’s fabulous boutique chocolaterie at the Royal Exchange in London.
Ronnie Fox who introduced me to this chocolate heaven (and kindly bought me the brownie) assures me that the hot chocolate which is made on the premises is also particularly good. And it certainly smelled divine.
Paul was in the Royal Exchange shop today and told us that he is busy working on his mother’s day collection. We have offered to act as tasters – if the current selection is anything to go by, the mother’s day chocolates will be sensational!
If you ever get the chance to visit, do so. Paul also has a shop in Camden Passage in Islington where he hand-makes the chocolates. And there is a website where you can look longingly at some of his creations (but sadly can’t yet buy).
A word of caution to anyone planning to buy Paul’s chocolates as presents for other people or indeed asking someone else to buy them for you – there are many stories circulating of chocolates being consumed on the way home and never reaching their intended recipient…You have been warned!!
For more information, visit Paul A Young’s website http://www.paulayoung.co.uk/
PS Since I first posted this, I have been in touch with Judith Lewis who is a big fan of Paul and regularly blogs about his work at http://mostlyaboutchocolate.com/ A great blog for chocoholics!
Posted: February 23rd, 2011 | Author: admin | Filed under: Miscellaneous | No Comments »
I know these are hard times for businesses but I have had four examples this week of very hard sell.
Example 1
Telephone call on my mobile from an insurance broker telling me she “needs to speak” to me about my home insurance. Then a letter, saying there are a few “points on your home insurance which need clarifying”. Feeling rather unnerved by this point and wondering whether there is a problem with the cover, I ring up. Of course, the brokers are just trying to secure the renewal of an existing policy. Actually, I am still comparing quotes.
Example 2
Letter from accountants warning that the risks of an in depth tax enquiry by HM Revenue & Customs have continued to increase. “HMRC officers are now using new wider powers to visit premises and inspect financial records…and the professional costs of defence are rising” and moreover “Even if you have done nothing wrong, the taxman will not give up and will still try hard to find errors”. And the way to provide “peace of mind” against such an onslaught is of course to pay for “Fee Protection” which incidentally costs almost as much again as the cost of preparing accounts. Terrifying.
Example 3
Letter from a party wall surveyor informing us that they understand from council records that our neighbours are building an extension to their property and that they are writing to let us know some “important legal information”, namely that the Party Wall Act applies if the extension involves “digging foundations within three metres” of our house. In these alarming circumstances we should appoint a surveyor “to safeguard” our legal rights and here’s a handy form we can complete nominating them. All very well except that we know that the “extension” is in fact a new bungalow our elderly neighbour is building at the end of her garden, nowhere near our house.
Example 4
Telephone call from the call centre of a nationwide optician telling me that my “next appointment is due” and indeed “recommended” by the optician and offering to arrange it. That’s fine except I have no ongoing relationship with any optician and this was simply one of the last companies which checked my eyes a couple of years ago.
Whilst I am happy to consider buying all these services if I need them, I do object to being frightened or pressurised into buying them. Anyone else had similar experiences?
Posted: February 9th, 2011 | Author: admin | Filed under: Miscellaneous | No Comments »
Love Grand Designs? Always wanted to build your own but lacked the funds? Interested in sustainability, innovative building methods and all things green? Here’s the chance to help rebuild Kevin McCloud’s famous eco house.
Planning permission has just been granted for the University of Brighton to rebuild The House That Kevin Built which was first erected in London’s Docklands live on Thames TV in six days in 2008 for Channel 4’s Grand Designs Live and heralded as the UK’s first low-energy prefabricated house made from eco-friendly materials.
The house was later dismantled but – and here’s the exciting part – the concept is being reborn in the courtyard of the University of Brighton’s Faculty of Arts.
Kevin McCloud, the British designer who presented the TV programme, is backing the idea along with Brighton & Hove City Council and the Building Research Establishment . The house was designed by architect Duncan Baker-Brown, a Brighton graduate.
In an article for Grand Designs Magazine, Kevin writes:
If you made it to Grand Designs Live at ExCeL in London in the spring of 2008, you will have been greeted by the sight of my house.Thousands of you tramped round it. I slept there during the exhibition, in fact, spending my 49th birthday there. It wasn’t, of course, the house where I spend the bulk of my time and which is full of my detritus. It was the house that I built, admittedly with the help of around 73 muscular adults, in just six days as an exemplar project of where domestic house building might go…..
The house came down, sadly, as it was there only for the duration of the exhibition, but being a component-built project it was always intended that it might go somewhere else. The exciting news is that it now has a new home in Brighton where we’re hoping to reincarnate it as a project for the University. The House That Kevin Rebuilt is goingto fit in the quadrangle of the Faculty of Arts in Grand Parade, which is a lump-of Hemcrete’s-throw away from the Royal Pavilion, so it’ll be available to see for anyone in the towncentre.
It will also provide a working laboratory for researchers to monitor the building’ s performance, carbon footprint and evolution. Different faculties will be involved and the building adapted and furnished by students.. ..
And here’s where you come in – £300,000 is needed to re-build the house. All donations to the University are eligible for both Gift Aid and the government’s matched funding scheme; for every £2 received in philanthropic donations, the University can claim an additional £1 from the government.
If you would like to make a donation to the project, click here and you will be taken to the University’s secure JustGiving site. Mention The House That Kevin Built in the comments box when you make the donation to ensure that your donation goes directly towards re-building this unique Grand Design.
More information HERE.
Posted: January 14th, 2011 | Author: admin | Filed under: Grandparents, Miscellaneous | No Comments »
I was reminded to write something about labelling certain sectors of the population when a friend I met on the train this week (a self evident “Baby Boomer”) was trying to hold himself out as a “Generation X-er”.
So here goes:
Matures
By far one of the more complimentary names, “Matures” purportedly refers to people born before the Second World War.
Baby Boomers
People born roughly between 1946 and 1964 are often called baby boomers after birth rates boomed following the return of the soldiers after the Second World War. The term “baby boomer” divides opinion. Some like its rather positive, upbeat overtones while others consider it pejorative, suggesting pre-geriatric toddlers.
Generation X (or the Baby Busters)
People born between 1965 and late 70s /early 80s. According to some, this is the generation with a fondness for leisure which is not afraid to spend money.
Generation Y
Also known, rather dashingly, as the Millenium Generation, Gen Y-ers were born in the 1980s and 1990s.
SWOFTIES
A new one, this, coined I believe by the Financial Mail this week, SWOFTIES are Single Women Over 50 who like clubbing, Twitter and exotic holidays.
SKI-ERS
Baby Boomers and Matures spending the kids’ inheritance. We seem to be hearing less about this group these days, perhaps because the kids are just as likely to be spending their parents’ retirement fund in an effort to get on the housing ladder
Sandwich Generation
These are people caught in the middle of looking after their parents whilst raising their children. Not to be confused with :
Club Sandwich Generation
Grandparents looking after grandchildren, helping children out financially and caring for their own elderly parents.
So there you have it. Although a marketeer’s dream, labelling like this is not that helpful and noone comes out of this sort of classification well (although the SWOFTIES seem to be having fun!).
PS
Since first publishing this list, www.virtualgranny.com have also suggested MAPPY = Mature Affluent Pioneering People with Youthful Enthusiasm which has a nice ring to it!
Posted: January 14th, 2011 | Author: admin | Filed under: About retirement - Howard Croft, Miscellaneous | No Comments »
![howard_croft1-150x150[1]](http://blog.thefutureperfectcompany.com/wp-content/uploads/howard_croft1-150x15011.jpg "howard_croft1-150x150[1]")
Dear Philippa,
Before Christmas, I spent a few days reminiscing with my sister and our cousin about our shared childhood in the fifties. I was struck not just by how much I had forgotten, but also by my failure to recall anything whatsoever about some events even when they were described to me in detail. No echo at all. My journey home from this pleasant interlude took me through Hull, the city of my birth, where I took a detour to look at the street in which I was born and lived until I was eighteen. Not that I was born in the street itself – we could do better than that – but in one of the terraced houses. My entire family, grandparents, aunt uncle and cousins all lived in this street, but ours was an “end of terrace” house boasting what we regarded as a large garden. Actually, it was rather small – but bigger than the one I now enjoy, though I call it a cottage garden, to make me feel better. I suppose I am lucky to have survived – it was wartime, pre-NHS, and I was a “blue baby”, something I discovered only a few weeks ago.
I was also lucky in that I ”got out” of what is not, and never was, the garden spot of the East Riding and although I was a happy child I would not have grown into a happy adult in that place. I would like to tell you that I got out by running away to sea, or that I joined a circus, which would be a good story, but the dull truth is that I passed the 11+, went to a grammar school, and later to university. Very slippery of me. It is a sad fact that while I see the 11+ examination the critical factor in a process that got me out of an unpromising situation it is spoken of in the same hushed an disapproving way as the Black Death, the Great Terror, and Margaret Thatcher’s Poll Tax. Especially by teachers who ought to know enough history of education to keep them from such silliness; they are full of doctrine but have no perspective.
Anyway, feeling increasingly depressed as I wandered along the street I recovered a long forgotten memory – the ricky boots I wore. These were similar to the boots issued to soldiers at the time, and favoured by workmen during that period of Army surplus plenty, but were supplied in small sizes to children who had suffered from rickets, and had weakened ankles. By the fifties rickets must have been pretty much a thing of the past, though I suspect the crooked backs and bow legs that I remember noticing in some adults was a hangover from the afflictions of earlier generations. But ricky boots were still popular among poorer families – I suppose because they were hard-wearing - but were seen as shameful by the respectable working classes, partly because the association with the disease, compounded with the “shame” of poverty that unlike rickets was still with us. I wanted a pair.
My mother, being respectable working class, resisted but I wore her down the way children do and the great day arrived when I put them on to go to school. I would have been about eight or nine. Mum laced them up good and tight and I set off to walk the half mile to school, kicking sparks from the studs as I went. About half way to school I suffered terrible pain in my ankles, lost the use of my legs, and howled. Two women who knew me made a chair of their arms and carried me home to Mum – in those days there were no CRB checks to deter them – who instantly diagnosed the problem, whipped off the rickies, put me into a pair of “smart but casual” school shoes from Clarke’s and sent me packing. I never saw my ricky boots again. Mum knew best.
Best wishes,
Howard
Posted: December 12th, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: Miscellaneous | 1 Comment »
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What do you think makes a classic Christmas film? Something comforting and heart warming maybe or something which will make you laugh?
We have put together a list of our top 5 Christmas films. Do you agree? What would your top 5 look like?
1. What a Wonderful Life (1946) – An angel helps a compassionate but despairingly frustrated businessman (James Stewart) by showing what life would have been like if he had never existed. Christmas classic.
2. Miracle on 34th Street (1947, remade in 1994) – When a nice old man who claims to be Santa Claus (Richard Attenborough in the later version) is institutionalized as insane, a young lawyer decides to defend him by arguing in court that he is the real thing. Best line: Kris: If you can’t learn to accept anything on faith, then you are doomed for a life dominated by doubt.
3. Little Women (1994) – Based on the Louisa May Alcott novel, this film starring Winona Ryder and set around the holiday period, focuses on the March sisters growing up in Massachusetts during the American Civil war. Expect drama, tears, love and family.
4. Home Alone (1990) – 8 year old Kevin McAllister (Macaulay Culkin) is accidentally left behind when his family takes off for a vacation in France over the holiday season. Whilst initially relishing time by himself, he is later greeted by two would-be burglars whom he eventually manages to outwit with a series of booby traps. Good family fun.
5. Elf (2003) – Will Ferrell stars as a man raised by Santa’s elves at the North Pole and sent to America in search of his true identity. Oddly endearing.
Posted: October 5th, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: Miscellaneous | No Comments »
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I am feeling rather despondent since the ceiling collapsed yesterday.
Up until that point I was feeling quite chirpy having finally got our fence fixed. This is the fence which routinely fails at some point during the year. This year it was the victim of a luxuriant but out of control honeysuckle.
We are supremely unlucky in that we seem to have responsibility for all the fences bordering our garden.
So, we fixed the fence and the hall ceiling collapsed 2 hours later. It turns out that the shower tray whose dripping tendencies we thought we had finally curbed had been silently but steadily leaking water into the joists and floor boards until it all proved too much for the ceiling.
I must admit to a Chicken Licken moment until I remembered the insurance policy. Surely such a devastating event would be covered? This is just the disastrous event for which we had been paying our premiums for the past 25 years.
But no, dear reader. Turns out it was the wrong sort of leak. If there had been a big gushing leak, we would have been fine. All expenses paid (apart of course from the hefty excess that the insurers imposed last time we renewed). But small, stealthy leaks, sorry, no.
So there we are. A fence but no ceiling. Where’s Henny Penny when you need her…?
Posted: September 21st, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: Care, Miscellaneous, New products! | No Comments »
Yesterday I spent the afternoon looking at toilets. But these are no ordinary loos, these washlets are part of Japanese designers, TOTO’s campaign to revolutionise Europe with life enhancing clean technology.
Now the British don’t have a great record with equipment which bathes the nether regions. Remember bidets. Installed in their hundreds of thousand in bathrooms throughout the country in the 70s and 80s, many bidets have been left to languor as occasional and expensive footbaths.
But TOTO’s products which promise “previously unimaginable levels of cleanliness, relaxation and contentment” look set to change all that.
And they are beautiful. Sleekly styled, elegant and modern, these toilets are fit to grace the most upmarket of bathrooms (and as architects and designers make a bee line for TOTO’s showroom in Clerkenwell, are doing so increasingly). And the features! Automatic seat lift, self cleaning washing wand using warm water, heated seat, deodoriser, Tornado Flush. The list goes on.
Have I convinced you yet? Another thought. Now, I know that we don’t like to dwell on these things but it did occur to me that a washlet would be a real luxury as we get older and ordinary activities like going to the toilet are not as straightforward as they once were. This is independence with real style!
And don’t get me started on the stunning illuminated washbasins..
For more information, go to eu.toto.com
Posted: August 18th, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: Miscellaneous | 2 Comments »
![iStock_000009863164XSmall[1]](http://blog.thefutureperfectcompany.com/wp-content/uploads/iStock_000009863164XSmall1-300x199.jpg "iStock_000009863164XSmall[1]")
One of the biggest gripes I have heard about getting older is finding shoes that not only fit well but are fashionable and stylish.
Here are a few suggestions which have come my way over the past few months:
1. Marks & Spencer Footglove range
These are a firm favourite with many of my friends and family. Comfortable shoes in smart designs at reasonable prices. An everyday shoe. http://www.marksandspencer.com
2. Hotter shoes
Hotter shoes are made by a family company in Lancashire and are all about delivering comfort and style. They are only available online but offer free exchanges if you get the wrong size http://www.hottershoes.com/
3. FitFlops
Recommended to me by a friend awaiting a foot operation, FitFlops are part of the new wave of footwear promising exercise whilst you walk. FitFlop sandals wearers have apparently also reported relief from plantar fasciitis, heel spurs, chronic back pain, sciatica, osteoarthritis, RLS (restless leg syndrome), scoliosis and degenerative disc disease. I’ve not tried them myself and the sandals maybe too summery for the Autumn but they may be worth checking out if you have problem feet. http://www.fitflop.com/page/home/
4. Wolky shoes
This is a Dutch company (which delivers to the UK) and its shoes are not cheap – but they are by far the most fashionable range of designs I have seen for so-called “comfort” shoes (shouldn’t they all be?!). And their boots look great too. https://secure.wolkyshop.com/
Do you have any other suggestions?
PS
Another suggestion I have received is Josef Seibel shoes which I am told are “stylish – no good for wearing with a floaty summer skirt, but look great with a denum or cord skirt. Soooo comfortable too” http://www.josefseibel.co.uk/
Any more suggestions?
You might remember earlier in the year that I wrote about a project being undertaken at the University of Brighton to rebuild an eco house first built by Grand Designs’ Kevin McCloud live on Channel 4 in 2008. (http://blog.thefutureperfectcompany.com/2011/02/09/help-build-a-grand-design-from-as-little-as-2/)
![iStock_000012136967Small[1]](http://blog.thefutureperfectcompany.com/wp-content/uploads/iStock_000012136967Small11.jpg "iStock_000012136967Small[1]")
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