We've spent months since we moved in agonizing and thinking and having people over and then agonizing and then thinking some more about getting a swimming pool . On Sunday we finally bit the bullet, and got Steve, from Mr Carlos pools, around for the third time, and made him measure and think and draw plans and calculate and measure again, and so on. Steve seemed to know what he was talking about more than some of the other designers we had, didn't suggest that we needed a landscape designer (that made S really cross) and also was amongst the cheapest.
Then we signed a contract to build a pool in our back yard.
But there's a weird Los Angeles (or maybe California, or somewhere anyway) that if you want a pool that's seven feet deep, you have to be seven feet from the neighbors. Unless you get permission from the neighbors, in writing. Trouble is our neighbor is about 107 and bedridden, and we've never seen, let alone spoken to her. (We know she exists, because an ambulance turns up once in a while, with red flashing lights, to revive her; or something). Anyway, you don't have to get permission if you write them a letter (recorded delivery) and they don't respond within 30 days. And we think that her responding is pretty unlikely.
So the nice people at Mr Carlos and Associates (weird name for a company - but apparently it was started in the 1950s, and Mr Carlos is still about) said that they would send me a letter as an example of what to write to her. Except they don't have a scanner, and I don't have a fax. So they copied it and posted it. Except they were too moronic to notice that the photocopy (which was of a fax) was so poor that they might as well have sent a blank piece of paper.
So, in our usual fashion of finding highly skilled tradespeople, we expect people who can't read (it appears) to be able to build a swimming pool made of steel and concrete and electricity and chemicals. (And water, I suppose.)
But maybe it's different people. We'll see.
Picture at the top shows the letter they sent on the bottom, with a random letter that I had lying around (it's actually about driving in Mexico). The letter they sent really is the right way up.
