What don't you get....?

The 1950's tiled fire surround - a shit brown coloured ceramic tile and concrete structure, bordering an open fire place for coal/log fires. They were very popular in the 1950's, when the fashion was for ripping out anything Victorian and replacing it with souless, non functional ugly stuff. The whole thing was less than 6" wide which made it useless as a mantlepiece, as the clock is 7" wide, it obscured the original art nouveau tilesss and stuck out 2' into the room. Being concrete and tile, an unsteady 2 yr old had already fallen over it several times, and the risk of serious injury was increasing as the top was about level with her head when she got to 3 years old.

Newham Council were my former employers. They had a purge of those with high sickness levels. They sacked several people, two of whom were asthmatic. The full time asthmatic got reinstated on appeal. Despite proving that my manager massaged my sickness figures (doubling them pro rata to my part time status, thus giving me a 6 day working week once a month and twice as many sick days as actually taken), my appeal failed, simply because I was part time. To give an example... if I worked 3 days one week, and took the middle day off sick, my manager would work it out as if I were full time, thus giving me a 6 day week and 2 days off sick, regardless of which days I took. Obviously, if I were at work Wed, off Thurs but back Fri, I would have worked the same if I'd been full time. Get it? In the UK, despite being a life threatening illness, more so than diabetes or epilepsy (stats show more people die in a year from asthma than the other two) asthma is not considered a disability. Were it so, I'd still be there.

Pickaxe and a 5lb lumphammer - a pickaxe is a large digging implement, a wooden handle with a curved blade fixed at one end. The handle is fixed to the middle of the blade, one end of which is pointed, the other flattened out to make a cutting edge some 2-3 inches across. Commonly used for breaking concrete, levering up paving slabs and other physical labour. A lumphammer is a sturdy wooden handle bearing a solid metal head, roughly rectangular in shape, weighing between 2lb - 8lb. The commonest is 5lb. Used in conjunction with a wedge or chisel, it is heavier than the common hammer and is used for tougher substances such as concrete.

Clearer now? It cheered me up no end.

LTS