Well last Tuesday didn’t go well.  The morning started with an early phonecall from our contractor who had been contacted by our left-hand-side-neighbour, with a complaint that her electric fence had been damaged, her wall ‘destabilised’ and her security compromised…  This was not our first ‘headbut’ with this particular neighbour.  I refrained from writing about the first one…

There’s an old saying that reads something to the effect of not being able to ‘bake a cake without breaking a few eggs.’  Somebody needs to remind our neighbour of this and that will probably eventually have to be me.  Her own house is beautiful and was extensively renovated quite recently.  I wonder how she did it without making any noise or breaking anything in the process.

The contractor, who has previously told me that he has had experience with every possible kind of difficult neighbour, seems to have almost met his match with this one.  He was not happy.  The neighbour’s electric fence technician was there and there was no evidence to be found of damage or destabilisation anywhere.  Although I’m not sure the same could have been said for the people involved…  I decided to simply let things be for a while.

A couple of  days and a couple of phone calls later and we’ve decided that the very first thing we will build, at the soonest possible opportunity, will be the new boundary wall between our property and hers. In the meantime she wants to install electric fencing down that side but it seems completely pointless to do that until the new wall is in place.  We’re going to meet with her and her security consultant tomorrow afternoon.

The rest of Tuesday passed in disappointing silence with not a word from the Heritage Association.  By Thursday I’d decided the time had come to be more proactive and eventually managed to track down the website, a name and a contact number for PHRAG – the Provincial Heritage Resources Agency – Gauteng.

I called the number without expecting much and was taken by surprise when the phone was answered promptly by none other than the man I had hoped to speak to, Mr Grant Botha.  He was helpful and informative and said that the usual waiting period in these situations is 8 to 10 weeks, a fact that had somehow passed us by.  It is, I think, 7 weeks since our application was submitted.

The Association had met on Tuesday but had only dealt with ‘presentations’ which I assume must be for applications to alter or demolish buildings with bone fide heritage credentials.  The ‘lesser’ applications were deferred to a later date.  This was not good news.  It seems this week is to be taken up with ‘staff training’ and the next possible date for our hearing is the 30th of April.  I don’t want to get my hopes up as the next day, the 1st, is a public holiday and most of this country will take either the two days leading up to the 1st as holidays, or the two days after as holidays or, – and this is the most likely scenario – the entire week.  

And so the Waiting Game continues.

There was once a time when I thought ‘Shambles’ might be a good name for a house.  It is, after all, a lovely word: satisfyingly onomatopoeic, it needs no further explanation.  But, on reflection, much as I like the sound of it, actually living in it is not that appealing and I decided that as a name it might be better suited to an Old English Sheepdog.

It’s a shambles.

But right now, ‘Shambles’ would be the perfect name for our new property.

After our high hopes last Monday, the silence was deafening.  A phone call (made by our architect) on Tuesday, established that for no rhyme or reason, the reluctant Heritage Committee had arbitrarily deferred the promised meeting.  Now, we’re told, it is set to take place tomorrow.  We’re not holding our breath.

But today, being in the vicinity while waiting for Daisy to emerge from the parlour, we dropped in to check on progress and discovered that in the meantime, the contractor has demolished almost all the younger parts of the house.  Being a small stand, there is not a lot of space left that is not covered in rubble, roof trusses and window frames.  It’s difficult to move around but already, with the left-hand ‘modern’ wing removed, we’re able to get a much better impression of the length of the plot  and it is easier to imagine where the cottage and garages will be positioned.

The left wing has been demolished.

In the extremely unlikely event that we’re refused permission to demolish

Looking back towards the street

completely, it would be very difficult to restore any sort of order around the old footprint.  But I’m not even going to allow myself to think about that.  The picture below is a view of the some of the rooms that are over 60 years old.  For this we need the Heritage Association to meet.