Are you the only neighbor who works on vehicles?

[Ducked]

Originally Posted By: Jetronic
Originally Posted By: Ducked
Originally Posted By: Jetronic
It's a 350 euro fine if you get caught working on your car/bike/bicycle here on public streets.


That a NATIONAL regulation? ALMOST makes me feel better about BREXIT. But the separatists are just as likely to go in for that kind of conformity-enforcement.


No, city council.

It's apparently due to some youths causing a nuisance with their Honda Camino/Dax etc...


Not quite so bad then. Officious [censored] are of course international, but I havn't heard of that at a city level in the UK.

Local housing is a different matter. Friend of mine in Windsor isn't "allowed" by the Residents Committee to park his BMW GS in a car space, though they don't have a car.

No washing or plastic toys or Christmas trees or trainsets (or barbecues)..(etc I can't remember the list) on balconies.

No car or motorcycle maintenance activities of any kind, though there was a lockup garage round the back for each flat (a problem when I visited them, as you might expect, since my cars often need a bit of fiddling).

No pets of any kind (Its probably now safe to reveal that they had a hidden hamster, but they had to double-wrap its waste bedding before chucking it out, just in case)

While I was staying there I needed a haircut, and, since thats a messy process for someone else's bathroom, I took a mirror and some scissors out to the garden. Sho nuff, 10 minutes of snipping later some retired-colonel-type-[censored] hoves into view and gives me the barked "Who-are-you-and-what-THE-DEVIL-do-you-think-you're-doing?" routine.

Turned out he was the Rezidentz Kommitte Gaulieter.

I figured I couldn't really tell him to go [censored] himself without possibly causing trouble to mine hosts, so I gave "icy politeness" my best shot and answered his intrusive and assinine questions, while declining to say who I was staying with.

I then asked him why my haircutting was of concern. He said some elderly female residents had been frightened by a suspected intruder in the past.

Presumably the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

 

[apwillard1986]

We are the first folks on the street and my wife laughs at me because as each neighbor moves in I am gauging my likeliness to befriend them based upon their ownership of a mower or a toolbox.

It's kind of a shame. When I was little my dad was one of many guys who spent evenings wrenching and welding in the garage. Maybe it's our increasingly disposable society or just a lack of influence instilling the knowledge and desire in the young.

I had to teach a younger guy I work with how to change a bit in a drill. I'm just glad it didn't require a chuck key or he would have really been stumped. I made it a point not to belittle him. He seemed genuinely grateful for the instruction. It brought home the reality that fewer and fewer young people are being taught what I was lucky enough to take for granted...

 

[ffhdriver]

I was the neighborhood mechanic years ago. I rebuilt carburetors, changed points, plugs, shocks, fuel and water pumps,alternators and generators. All the easy stuff. I never charged, but did mention that my wife and I loved pizzas. Got several. One person gave me a Weller soldering gun that I used for over 20 years.

 

[copcarguy]

Originally Posted By: apwillard1986
... It brought home the reality that fewer and fewer young people are being taught what I was lucky enough to take for granted...

Wow this sentence really made me think... It made me proud that my 4 and 7 year old kids WANT to work on stuff with me.

 

[Ducked]

Girl I knew back in The Yook used to call me (and her dad) OA's.

Stands for Oily Anachronism, allegedly, though it might not be coincidental that its also the first two letters of OAP (Old Age Pensioner) which her dad actually was.