Dental Floss

Hi adoring fans,

I am aware that I have been less than diligent in keeping you fully informed of the thoughts of chairman Pete. Indeed the last blog was a year ago at least and that was only the second ever! But as you know quality never did come in great Lidl sized family blocks ... oh no.

Another example of the kind of thing that really exercises me took place today and I felt it might be cathartic for us all if I shared it with you.

I live in Bath. My dear mother (the ancient of days) lives in Bristol some 10 miles away. The road to her door for filial attentions of one sort or another is well trodden indeed and the mighty Honda (preferred chariot of your current entertainer) has clocked up a fair few of her 130,000 miles along this stretch of road.
Anyway, as is their habit the planners have been "improving" a perfectly functional interchange by adding in traffic lights, incomprehensible lane markings that could probably be read from Mars, but make no sense to the normal road user, and generally clogging up the works with cones and vans and dozens of industrious fellows in yellow jackets thinking about what to do next in happy groups.
As I say it all worked very well before it was "improved".
Today was like Ben Hur meets Logan's Run! Nobody had a clue about which lane to be in, the previously smoothly running traffic was gridlocked and all was chaos. Dante would have blanched!
I wonder how much it cost!? Perhaps someone got an award for design; nothing would surprise me.

Which brings me to the Dental Records plonker of the decade award!

Now as you can imagine, gentle reader, this one is hotly competed. All of Westminster is in the running, health and safety gestapo everywhere and a fair smattering of other inspired wreakers of chaos and misery. Disciplines such as architecture, inspectors of all kinds and especially planners were famously represented and made the whole competition white hot.

But we have a winner. a piece of strident idiocy so breathtakingly audacious as to fair tug at the heart strings. I give you, in gold medal position, the architect of the newly restored Bath Spa!!!

Now, I can understand if you feel in need of a little more information ..... so here goes.

About, oooooo, ten years ago, some fathead thought it might be good to spend all the taxpayers' money from Bath on a luxurious spa / health facility. A place of relaxation and calm, awash with the vapours of cedar and lavender. Where OCD folk from all over the globe could come to pay silly money for a rub down with a towel and a couple of handfuls of Harpic on a night light. Very new age, very eco - friendly greeny, lovey etc etc.

But this "sensible" plan (passed of course immediately by the far sighted and omnipotent planning department) was never going to be cheap. So its tighten your belts, forget any local services, litter collection, refuse on time or street cleaning for the foreseeable and rejoice in this jewel in the Aquae Sulis crown. The Spa!!!

No doubt there was a good deal of tooth sucking over the appointment of an architect and having established the one with no GSCEs and a white stick and labrador the good burghers of Bath pressed ahead.

They booked the three tenors (but it cost more than £30) he he.

Pavarotti sang, but the opening was delayed for months because of a technical mistake by the architect..... now this is the real master stroke that secured that coveted gold medal and pole position in Dental Records Plonker of the Decade Award.

You need to remember this Spa is basically three swimming pools in a tall building. The main one on the roof where you can swim and listen to the romantic sound of Seagulls crying and crapping in the water. This is vital knowledge before we proceed.

Our man, not content with designing an elitist piece of nonsense that few wanted in the first place managed to massively increase the cost (I mean by multiple factors) by ... now wait for this... remember the three swimming pools full of the celebrated Bath water (+ chlorine for the seagull poo)... forgetting to include the weight of the water in his design plan and so the whole thing had to be rebuilt as the stress calculations and weight bearing data was all up the swannee (or is that spa?)

So instead of just being a ludicrously expensive folly that few would really be able to afford to use and which would consume the huge rates we all pay in this fair city, in one masterful piece of empty headed stupidity our man created a truly cripplingly expensive folly.

The award is justly merited.

As we speak Bath city council is considering knocking down one or two Georgian terraces and a crescent or three to build a pink multi storey goat pen where goatherds from all over the world can come to tether their goats in luxuriously appointed pens. I only hope I'm joking!