Lord Of The Boot Sale

Sunday, December 21, 2025

Becky Lee Beck - I Want A Beatle For Christmas

A 1964 release, ten years earlier there was a song 'I Want Eddie Fisher For Christmas', it was recorded by a number of Artists.

I WANT A BEATLE FOR CHRISTMAS - BECKY LEE BECK.wmv

Stereo

I WANT A BEATLE FOR CHRISTMAS BECKY LEE BECK DES

More Vagarants and Blocked Drains

In one building we would get complaints that when the weather got hot the building smelt like a Gents Urinal, much time, effort & money was spent trying to find the source of the problem, was there damage to the stack pipes or a break between the toilets to the stack, no problem could be found that would cause the smell. Out the back of the building was an underground electrical sub station, by the entrance door was a recess and a drain, the drain was blocked and there was what we thought was water possibly 6-8 ins deep, it was not our building or responsibility, the local vagrants were using the stairs down to the entrance as a urinal, meaning it was not water but urine, it was also discovered that the air intake for the air conditioning was in the electrical sub station, the electricity board got the drain unblocked, the problem disappear, the management liked to do frequent reorganisations, knowledge about buildings was not passed on and lost.

At some point the company decided to replace the roller towels with green paper towels to save money, the roller towels were removed and money was saved on that budget, the number of blocked toilets and stacks increased, one green paper towel could hold back a whole stack, once the held back sewerage got to a certain level it would find the path of least resistance, in this case the 1st floor ladies toilet and then flow down the main staircase, resulting in a big clean up, this was a fairly common occurrence, the building was being transferred to another division within the company who had their own facilities, the building a typical 1960's office and did not have the best natural light, they had chosen dark grey furniture, it made the floors look dark and dingy, before we had moved the last of our people out, we got a blocked stack, sewerage coming out the first floor ladies toilet and running down the stairs, we put into practice the by now well tried clean up procedure, there facilities said to me you must promises me this will never happen again, I said I can only promise it will not happen again if your staff do not flush the green paper hand towels down the toilets, they never did move in as the group was disbanded shortly afterwards.

The change to paper towels may have saved money on one budget, but increased the costs on another, in the end it cost far more than was saved.

The building was on the site of the Holborn Empire, there was a preservation order on the site, the building had to be in the footprint of the Holborn Empire.

In another building (now demolished) there would be flooding in one of the Gents Toilets after it had rained, specialists were brought in various coloured dyes were put on the roof to see if the water was coming in from a leak in the roof, they could not find the source of the water, it remained an unsolved problem, the staff were moved out and the building was closed, during the soft strip it was found the the urinals in that toilet had never been connected to the main stack and had been draining into the area the stack ran down, the building was about 60 years old and this problem had been there since Day1.

The building had won a number of Architectural Awards when it was built, I was based there after my Facilities days and was looking at the chimney, on each floor it had a platform around the chimney these were close fitting to the chimney, there was no drainage provided from the platforms, the rain water had no way of escape and puddled there.

Saturday, December 20, 2025

Thursday, December 18, 2025

Gorman Sisters - Jesus Is My Santa Claus.

Released November1957, the picture sleeve promoted this as the 'Most Popular Christmas Song Of All Time', the first time I heard this reord was when I played it to transfer it to a digital format, I can think of many other records that are much better known than this record.

The Gorman Sisters - Jesus Is My Santa Claus