.......meanwhile back in the pond
I live in a council property. It use to be a residential home with a warden, but somewhere in the past the warden got replaced by a common all garden tenant like me. The property, which is a maisonette, has a high upper age limit to qualify for a tenancy. I’ve lived here for about six or seven years. I live on the ground floor.At about the same time that I moved in the lady in the flat above me moved in as a new tenant. Like me she has health issues, she has cancer. Treatment for her cancer involved removing portions of her body, followed by reconstructive surgery to replace the bits the hospital threw away. Unfortunately, the hospital never managed to remove all the cancer, so she had to undergo more surgery and more bits of her body was thrown away. It delayed the reconstructive surgery.Like everyone else she got to work decorating and furnishing the place. When she had finished her home was on par with Buckingham Palace. She threw her entire life’s saving into it. Her idea was that she was going to take early retirement and fight her cancer so she needed the place ready.When we both moved in we noticed the roof guttering was leaking. We both reported it. Nothing was done. We reported it again, and again nothing was done. This was the story for about five or so years. Slowly over time the guttering got worse and started to flood the balcony outside her front door. Still they council refused to respond to our request for someone to sort the guttering out.Last year We had a period of extra heavy rain. The inevitable happened, Water from the busted guttering flooded her out. It poured in through the front door from the now badly flooding balcony, it poured in through the wall, it poured in through the ceiling. All the hard work, the new furniture, everything ruined. She contacts the council. The council told her the following, “ we are only responsible for our property, not yours.” They were adamant, The lady upstairs made phone call after phone call and they refused to budge. It was at this time she found out the cancer was back.Now downstairs in my place I start to have problems. The lady’s front door balcony sits on top of my kitchen and bathroom. Water starts coming through my bathroom wall. I reported it, along with the nasty crack it had left behind, and again it was ignored. During all this the guttering leak was now a waterfall. Directly under the now wrecked guttering is a drain. Over time the guttering had been pounding away at it. Slowly the earth around it gets washed away, leaving a floating drain. The pipe from the drain was the old terracotta type and fed into the sewer. The terracotta pipe which was now open to the elements was pounded to oblivion by the waterfall. Eventually I start to get effluent flooding around my back door.Meanwhile upstairs the lady has started to carry out repairs at her own expense. Wall plaster was replaced, ceilings replaced, fitted kitchen replaced, and wet furniture replaced. She’s still rattling the council’s cage over the damage with lots of calls. Because she had exhausted her finances getting the place fitted out the first time, she’s now using her credit card to fix the damage this time. Any hope of early retirement is well and truly gone while she clears them up. The lady upstairs has just had a phone call from the hospital. She’s now got a date to start the reconstruction surgery. She has booked two weeks holiday so she can have it. Then it’s back to work so she can get her credit card paid off. She needs a couple of months of work, hell she needs to retire.
Dennis Bailey ● 2817d4 Comments ● 2804d