The worst thing about house make over programmes on the tv – and let’s face it there are loads of them - is that they give the impression that you can transform any house into a palace at almost no cost in almost no time. That’s tv of course but more than one customer goes off to work in the morning expecting everything to be finished with a vase of flowers on the kitchen table by the time they get home. It can be quite a shock to discover that a 2 room extension can’t be done in 8 hours.

The make-over phenomenon has inspired many people to make changes to their homes which can be a good thing. People are much more ready to change things to get what they want rather than accept the way their home is now. In that respect all those shows have provided a lot of good ideas and direction. It’s the show-biz element that is hard to live up to in real life.

The way a tv show is made means that all the things that happen behind the scenes aren’t part of the show because they are usually the boring part that wouldn’t be entertaining. Any good builder will be able to give a pretty accurate idea of how long a total job will take and making sure that the customer is fully aware is part of the job.

No one wants to think about winter and Christmas comes around too fast. The shops have already started selling the special Christmas foods and my local tesco even has that dedicated aisle of Christmas goodies with a full 3 months to go. It’s mad and for me it’s way too early, and it drives me barmy but there is one good point about it. Seeing something to do with winter reminds a lot of people to turn on their heating to test it. If it’s sat unused all summer of course any number of things can have seized up.

Quite often, even though a plumber will advise a customer to turn their heating on over the summer just to get everything moving through, most people forget or can’t be bothered.

Mind you it’s easy to see why – when you are baking in your shorts the last thing you want to think about is the awful winter that’s on its way. However, if the first time your heating goes on is on the same cold snap weekend in November that the rest of the country turn theirs on and it doesn’t work you may be trying to find a plumber at the same time as hundreds of other people.

It can mean waiting in line and as any plumbing firm will tell you it happens every year.

Of course in a lot of houses the ‘heating turn on’ date is the cause of many a domestic argument. Few couples or families seem to have the same view on what is cold. One person will sit shivering while the other wants to open a window – and for that miss-match it’s marriage guidance you need, not a plumber.

The wind is really picking up at the moment and there’s lots of talk in the press about the effect of various hurricanes and their tail-ends. Global warming is said to be the cause of much of our erratic weather and true or not we do seem to get a lot of wind these days.

Windy weather always makes me think of two things. Beans and loose slates. Beans because I’m just a kid at heart and school boy jokes never go away and loose slates because I for one always check my own roof any time there have been gales.

Loose slates and tiles go completely unnoticed until a gust of wind dislodges them, usually in the night. After a very windy night you can walk along most pavements in London and see the pieces of slate. If you don’t check your roof over after a storm then the first time you know that you’ve lost a slate is when you start to see a damp patch on your ceiling – and by then some damage has already been done.

I am always surprised that more people aren’t hit by falling slates in London or perhaps I just don’t hear about it as I don’t work in a hospital. I does seem to be that the worst of the wind comes at night which is lucky if you’re tucked up in bed.

Of course not everyone can see their own roof from street level so if it needs ladders get a roofer to have a look for you. You shouldn’t venture up on to a roof if you don’t know what you’re doing as the tragic story of the comedian Rod Hull who fell off his roof and died demonstrates.

Well although I don’t watch a lot of telly I was interested to see what would win the BBC T.V. show’s vote for Restoration Village. There were millions of pounds worth of work being spoken about and I thought that they might need a quote from a good reliable builder.

Seriously though it was gratifying to see that so many members of the British public are so interested in the restoration of beautiful old buildings and will vote in such numbers. For those who didn’t see the programme the winner was Chedham’s Yard in the Midlands – which is a little bit out of our geographical area anyway.

It’s an old blacksmith and wheelwright’s yard and it seems the first job there is work on the foundations as they are unsafe – so plenty to do before the structural work can begin. The Yard is going to be restored and used as a working museum.

It will be one of those places where they’ll have someone dressed up as a blacksmith lecturing hordes of school kids no doubt, which is good news for some unemployed actor somewhere. Most of the kids won’t have any idea what a blacksmith did of course as it doesn’t involve a computer.

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