Roy Hattersley

Strained relationship

There was, the architect said, no hope of getting planning permission for an extension...

There was, the architect said, no hope of getting planning permission for an extension. So I had the ingenious idea of solving our bedroom shortage by building what amounts to an annexe on the ‘footprint’ of the dilapidated potting shed on the other side of the orchard. The plans which we submitted to the Peak Park Authority were headed ‘guest accommodation’ — an anodyne description which I barely noticed. The same could not be said of my neighbours. As soon as the bright-yellow statutory notice was nailed to a door in our garden wall, half the village assumed that we were proposing to go into the bed-and-breakfast business. Anxious not to be knocked up late at night by improvident holidaymakers looking for somewhere to lay their weary heads, we determined to think of another name. In a moment of creative genius, I decided that the new building should be called ‘The Fairies’, because it is at the bottom of our garden. Friends, with senses of humour less sophisticated than mine, never find the name even faintly amusing. But I still smile to recall the subtle ingenuity of my invention. Unfortunately, it was totally unacceptable to Powergen on whom we depend for electricity.

Perhaps you were, for a moment, favourably impressed by the idea that a public utility company should hold opinions on the quality of its customers’ humour or, more laudable still, have views about the acceptability of house names. I myself am attracted by the notion that, for reasons of taste, supply might be refused to Chez Nous or Dunroamin. But there was nothing aesthetic about the objection. The inspector needed something plausible to put in his records. The Fairies has a separate meter from the house proper and Powergen could not, or would not, read each one, combine the two and send me a single bill which covered the amalgamated cost.

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