... everybody needs good neighbours. And here's another truism: when it rains, it pours. When it was "raining" in Sao Paulo, which was often - very often - it was amazing how many other things contributed to the soaking I received.
One day, I discovered I had been charged £250 because I had failed to pay my half-yearly service charge on time. That being the service charge on my "home", the flat in London to which I recently returned after a 13-month absence.
This £250 fine was because someone had seen fit to do a Land Registry check on my flat, that is to see if I was still, after many years of active involvement in the running of this place, the owner. The someone in question was our dear leader, the chairman of the "company" set up by residents to run this collection of 100-plus flats. Since I am also a director of said company, and since I had been in regular contact with the chairman and indeed our managing agent, it seems a little ... overzealous to give me this virtual pat-down. And then present me with the bill.
And all because for the first-time ever I failed to pay on time, or indeed within hours of receiving a bill though the post. For years I had asked the chairman why we couldn't receive our bills as email notifications or why we couldn't pay them by direct debit, as we do almost everything else, and then just forget about them. Oh no, he said, computer says no. We must follow "The Law" and deliver them by snail-mail. But what's to stop us doing both, I asked, to no avail. Our chairman is the kind of low-tech, blinkered bureaucrat who would probably thrive in Brazil.
This much ado about nothing mushroomed into a giant show-down and stand-off between us. It then ballooned even further by drawing in our fellow directors, who saw fit to put their names to an email demanding that A) I apologise and B) I resign. That's what you get when no-one can be bothered to be the chairman themselves and thus will say or do almost anything to keep the current incumbent sweet.
Equally unsurprisingly, I did neither A nor B but chose C: dearest fellow directors, please worry less about the sensitivites of our chairman and more about the real non-payers of our service charge, who are growing in number during these grim economic times.
So the show rumbles on and when I'm not being angry about it I can't help laughing at the age-old cliche of warring neighbours. This kind of war I can handle; the kind that involves armed assailants in my home I'm not so good at.
One day, I discovered I had been charged £250 because I had failed to pay my half-yearly service charge on time. That being the service charge on my "home", the flat in London to which I recently returned after a 13-month absence.
This £250 fine was because someone had seen fit to do a Land Registry check on my flat, that is to see if I was still, after many years of active involvement in the running of this place, the owner. The someone in question was our dear leader, the chairman of the "company" set up by residents to run this collection of 100-plus flats. Since I am also a director of said company, and since I had been in regular contact with the chairman and indeed our managing agent, it seems a little ... overzealous to give me this virtual pat-down. And then present me with the bill.
And all because for the first-time ever I failed to pay on time, or indeed within hours of receiving a bill though the post. For years I had asked the chairman why we couldn't receive our bills as email notifications or why we couldn't pay them by direct debit, as we do almost everything else, and then just forget about them. Oh no, he said, computer says no. We must follow "The Law" and deliver them by snail-mail. But what's to stop us doing both, I asked, to no avail. Our chairman is the kind of low-tech, blinkered bureaucrat who would probably thrive in Brazil.
This much ado about nothing mushroomed into a giant show-down and stand-off between us. It then ballooned even further by drawing in our fellow directors, who saw fit to put their names to an email demanding that A) I apologise and B) I resign. That's what you get when no-one can be bothered to be the chairman themselves and thus will say or do almost anything to keep the current incumbent sweet.
Equally unsurprisingly, I did neither A nor B but chose C: dearest fellow directors, please worry less about the sensitivites of our chairman and more about the real non-payers of our service charge, who are growing in number during these grim economic times.
So the show rumbles on and when I'm not being angry about it I can't help laughing at the age-old cliche of warring neighbours. This kind of war I can handle; the kind that involves armed assailants in my home I'm not so good at.
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