Events at Wolverton Park this year

Cladding and the Waking Watch

All residents of the two new(ish) blocks at WP received a four-page letter in July 2019 headed ‘Change to the Fire Evacuation Procedure’. This announced that a recent survey had found that:

‘certain elements of the cladding system and parts of the building structure are not as per the original architect drawings. Based on these findings and advice from the fire engineers the cladding system requires modifications to ensure that it is fully compliant with building regulations.’

The letter announced a change from the then-current ‘stay put’ policy to a new building evacuation policy of fleeing the building as soon as you hear the fire alarm. It then proceeded to announce the imminent installation of a fire alarm. I decided to stay calm in the light of this revelation that until now there had been no fire alarm in the building. Alarms were duly installed in each of the rooms in each of our flats over the next week or so.

Until the cladding system is ‘modified’, 24/7 fire wardens have been installed on the site to carry out patrols (and presumably, look out for smoke, flames leaping from windows, etc). The ‘Waking Watch’, as they are known, are still on site over a year later; God knows what they’re costing. A few months back a resident posted an update from the management company RMG assuring us that the cladding itself is industry-compliant, and stating that the required modifications should be completed by March 2021:

We had a demonstration of the new communal fire alarm in mid-November when it went off after a first floor resident of my block set fire to something in her kitchen. We all trooped outside to the car park and stood around for a dull (and chilly) half hour while the fire brigade turned up and investigated, and eventually turned the alarm off. The blocks have supposedly been designed such that fire is contained within the flats, as did appear to happen on this occasion (and, I believe, after this more major arson incident a few years ago). I suppose though the view is that after the Grenfell incident no chances can be taken.

Flood

Back in August, I was woken in the early hours of a Wednesday morning by someone knocking on the door of my flat. It turned out to be the resident of the flat below mine, asking if I had a water leak in my boiler cupboard. Before going to bed, I had been aware of the boiler making a bit of a gurgling and swishing noise, but not knowing what to attribute it to, I had decided to ignore it. On investigating, I discovered that there was indeed a leak, quite a large one that had flooded the cupboard and soaked the surrounding carpet. I hauled everything out of the cupboard and after several attempts managed to phone the emergency line for Places for People, the owners of the block (this after initially phoning both Touchstone, the letting agent, and RMG, the management company for the building, both of whom had tried to fob me off onto other people). I was a bit alarmed by this point as water had additionally started to come through one of the kitchen ceiling spotlights.

Thankfully, it turned out that PfP were already on the case with an emergency plumber, and it had been established that the leak was coming from the flat above mine. I went upstairs, where the resident, a mother of three young children including a baby, was looking rather at her wits end and had a hallway much wetter than mine. The plumber arrived and took a look in her boiler cupboard, and after a minute or so managed to do something that stopped the flow of water. He reckoned, I think, that some sort of flap had been opened on the underside of her boiler that shouldn’t have been. Relieved, I left them to it and returned to my flat, where the flow of water had thankfully stopped. After half an hour or so’s TV watching with a herbal tea, I had calmed down enough to go back to bed.

In the morning, I telephoned Touchstone and spoke to the helpful Shonah, who impressively arranged for three contractors to call round at my flat: an electrician to inspect the light fitting; a gas engineer to check my boiler and someone to clean the hallway carpet – particularly pleased at the last as I’d half-expected to have to fight over that one. A lad duly turned up mid-morning with an industrial-sized carpet cleaner called the ‘Enforcer’ – he assured me that he wasn’t over-compensating and blamed his boss for buying it. The results were brilliant, and no residual smell of damp. Thankfully (fingers crossed) it hasn’t recurred.

The Enforcer

My Ugg boots were too soaked to bother trying to dry, so I chucked them. I don’t hugely like Ugg boots on women of my age, but as they were given to me free, I’d worn them intermittently as something quick and comfortable. Ruth hated them and was pleased at their passing.

Soaked Uggs

Noticeboard argy-bargy

Earlier this year, Wolverton Park's Facebook group was supposedly 'hacked', leading to some members setting up a breakaway group which was supposed to replace the original group, except that many residents didn’t want the original group closed, which has led to certain people just posting twice in both groups. Which seems a bit silly to me.

The supposed hacker of the original group was someone who was either having a bit of a laugh or has a tenuous grasp on reality. Word on the ground seems to favour the latter, but as I don’t know the woman concerned I’ll reserve judgement. Certain people tried to maintain that nothing untoward had happened with the group, at which point I couldn’t resist wading in and pointing out that the group’s new admin appeared to be based in Pyongyang. It turned out it was a fake account set up by the aforementioned woman.

A seemingly normal and quite sensible guy has now taken over as admin of the original group. The new group is still up, for no apparent reason other than that the residents who set it up evidently want to be in charge of a group.

Watergate

I have the impression from other residents at WP that both the blocks have been affected by water issues of various kinds since their construction. God knows why. Since I’ve lived here, there have been a number of water leaks in the ground floor corridor of my block, plus a sound of gurgling water in the ceiling at the same spot. When new carpet was fitted throughout the building a couple of years ago, the section in this particular cursed stretch of ground floor corridor was immediately ruined by another water leak.

The other week, I noticed water again dripping from one of the ceiling tiles in this area and emailed RMG to report it to them. I’ve no idea if anyone actually came out – I didn’t get any response – but late on the Friday evening a portion of the ceiling collapsed due to weight of water, flooding this stretch of corridor and, I suspect, also the unfortunate flat whose door is right next to that part. This resulted in the loss of water supply to the entire building.

RMG posted updates on their ‘RMG Living’ portal which, thankfully, they’d recently allowed tenants access to – it was previously leaseholders only. The first was issued at around 11:20pm on the Friday night:

A further update a couple of hours later said that they couldn’t tell us when the water would be reinstated, but were working on it. They arranged for pallets of bottled water to be delivered to the site, so I went down early Saturday morning and nabbed myself one. I was reluctant to use this for flushing the toilet, though I gather some residents were using it for this, but it did come in handy for filling the kettle, though I went to Tesco later in the day and topped it up with some larger bottles.

We were updated later on the Saturday that a communal pipe had burst and that this would require a commercial plumber to fix it, who would not be able to complete the work until the Monday (because, presumably, the Sabbath is still strictly observed by both commercial plumbers and suppliers of parts). This caused a considerable amount of unrest among residents, and the upshot was that all residents of the block were offered alternative accommodation in local hotels until the water was turned back on. I declined to take advantage of this, mainly because my car had developed a problem and was booked in to a garage in Wolverton first thing on the Monday, and I wasn't that keen to drive it anywhere (the reason I hadn't just fled to Caversham on discovering the lack of water). Also, as I live alone in my flat, the lack of running water was inconvenient but bearable, whereas for the young families in the block I don't think it would have been. Some others did evidently stick it out in the block as well, and agents from Touchstone called round a couple of times to check we were OK and had been made aware of the alternative accommodation offer. A kind woman in the block opposite let me fill a bucket of water from her taps on the Saturday evening, which was useful.

A number of standing water tanks were delivered on the Sunday morning, looking rather like a cute little alien invasion.

Water tanks

The plumber did duly turn up on the Monday to carry out the repair work - a new section of pipe apparently. Unfortunately the sealant then had to be allowed 12 hours' drying time, with the result that the water was finally switched back on early on Tuesday morning. Probably in common with the rest of the block, I immediately loaded up my washing machine and dishwasher and had an extremely long shower. It certainly served as a reminder, if one was needed, that running water is a really good thing and being without it is extremely inconvenient.

Another walk near Kintbury, 4.1 miles

Sunday 20 December

Went over to Kintbury again a week ago for another Tier-whatever-compliant walk with Ray. This time we set out along the canal towpath towards Newbury. This is a pretty stretch.

At Shepherd's Bridge we turned off the towpath onto a path going southeast up Irish Hill and eventually coming out onto a minor road.

Shepherd's Bridge

Heading up Irish Hill

Looking back towards the canal

We took the lane opposite us (Old Lane) and followed this to where it joins the Newbury-Kintbury back road near Mason's Farm. 

We followed this road a short way before taking a footpath off to the right and further on turned right at a crossroads of paths to return to the minor road we'd come out onto earlier. We followed this road back into Kintbury.

Gorgeous morning and lovely countryside. Our route in red below. The line at the top is the section of canal towpath.

Rabbits ahoy

Following Harley’s death in June, we made the decision to return Catherine Howard to Reading Rabbit Rescue for re-bonding with a new companion and re-homing. Ruth was undecided what she wanted to do in terms of keeping rabbits, and we didn’t think it was fair on CH to keep her alone for an extended period while a decision was arrived at. The nice people at RRR made positive noises about having a number of potential matches for CH, so we took her in to them in mid-September when they advised they had room to take her. We still don’t know whether she’s been successfully bonded, though we gather one attempted bonding was unsuccessful.

Not at all to my surprise, Ruth did subsequently decide to carry on keeping house rabbits and had some discussion with Sandra at RRR about possibly fostering a bunny through the winter while waiting for a suitable bonded pair to come in, but we didn’t hear anything further about this. The upshot was that we have adopted a trio of rabbits from the Oxfordshire Animal Sanctuary at Stadhampton: Aragorn, a chunky black male with a gorgeous glossy coat; Arya, a slightly less chunky lionhead, mainly black but with some white; and Taylor, a slighter bunny with traditional English markings.

Just arrived at their new home

Bunny unboxing:

Aragorn

Taylor

Arya

They’re all around five years old and have all come from the same home. Aragorn and Arya are lively curious rabbits who have already explored the garden and living room; Aragorn shows some keenness for jumping up onto chairs and AV units, plus an alarming propensity to run enthusiastically towards the front door. Taylor is more cautious; she barely emerged from the understairs cupboard for the first week or so but is now spending more time out in the dining room, though she hasn’t ventured further as yet. There were concerns about her showing some aggression towards Arya, but this seems to have settled so we’re keeping fingers crossed.

Arya and Aragorn (on the chair) in the living room with us

Taylor, Aragorn and Arya

Walk with Ray from Kidlington, 5.5 miles

Wednesday 2 December 2020

On the day we were released from the November lockdown into the dizzying freedom of Tier 2, Ray and I both took a midweek day off to meet up for a walk. We agreed to meet at Kidlington as Ray had identified this on the map as a rough halfway point between Wolverton and Kintbury (about an hour's drive for each of us). We met up at the Watts Way car park, which is nicely placed in the centre of the town and has a handy public toilet, an important consideration for our middle-aged bladders.

We set off from the car park along Lyne Road and across the railway to join the Oxford Canal, which runs roughly north-south to the west of Kidlington. We turned northwards to follow the towpath initially through nondescript industrial areas but later reaching the village of Thrupp.

Oxford Canal heading north from Kidlington

Canal Road at Thrupp

At Thrupp, the canal turns left in a 90° turn to roughly follow the path of the River Cherwell.

Ray on the lift bridge over the canal at Thrupp

Boats at Thrupp

We carried on walking north as far as the village of Shipton-on-Cherwell. At the bridge at Shipton, we turned away from the canal to follow a path across a somewhat flooded field to a footbridge over the Cherwell.

Looking back towards Shipton and Holy Cross Church

Footbridge over the Cherwell

Further on, we passed under the railway and followed the footpath leading to Hampton Gay. This had a couple of points of interest: a church that seems to be marooned in the middle of a field, and the ruins of a sixteenth-century manor house. From internet research, there was formerly a more substantial village at Hampton Gay than there is now; this has a bit about the former village.

St Giles, Hampton Gay

The ruined manor house at Hampton Gay

We followed paths and bits of road south-east to Hampton Poyle and then back into Kidlington, where we had a snack lunch in the back of Ray's VW camper van - not strictly within Tier 2 rules, but it was too cold to eat outside.

Ray crossing one of many fields

This was a grey day but a very interesting walk. Part of it followed the Oxford Green Belt Way, apparently set up by the CPRE to highlight the importance of the green belt around Oxford.

Our route in red below, showing start and end points in Kidlington at the bottom.