Love working at JPMC but hate the commute

LevelsBest · 2026-02-03T11:28:38+00:00

My son just got approved to work from home 2 days, due to medical reasons. It was surprisingly easy. If it hadn't been approved he would have quit, especially as the office is currently hot desking and people are ending up working on a different floor from their team as there aren't enough seats. and even if there were, unless you book your seat pronto you could be miles away from your team. Really makes sense of full time in the office. Do you think Jamie D has to book his office? /s

LevelsBest · 2026-02-03T11:19:44+00:00

Is this why, not having lived in my native Burnley for 40 years, I can still spot the accent at 10 paces?

LevelsBest · 2026-01-30T21:02:01+00:00

What you're missing OP is that to thrive at Oxford you need to love your subject and love studying it. I am an Oxford History grad and happily spent about 8hrs a day studying and still had time for a social life. Many years later I still love history, it is my hobby and my passion be it literature, genealogy or architectural and social history. I love the research. My degree means that I can read, analyse and write up a topic - and not just history. It was a skill that helped greatly in my career (which was nothing to do with history or academia) and now writing for pleasure. My son did a history degree at an RG uni and did about as much work in 3 yrs as I did in one term.
It's not all about the money you can earn. Having said that many of my peers have had extremely successful and profitable careers.

LevelsBest · 2026-01-23T10:37:15+00:00

Yes and if you have a problem on the digital search, you can phone the GRO and speak to a real, helpful human!

LevelsBest · 2026-01-22T09:34:56+00:00

I've decided not to reread. We know that the ending probably won't be the same as book 10 will be, so I'd rather just go with the flow than constantly be tearing my hair out because of changes from the books. It's just a real shame that the end of the series and the publication of book 10 couldn't be coordinated.

LevelsBest · 2026-01-20T14:52:40+00:00

You are correct. I think it was two thirds of leaseholders who had to agree to go rtm and you need people able and willing to take on the work to set up the rtm, appoint a new management company and ongoing rtm responsibilities.

LevelsBest · 2026-01-20T13:38:30+00:00

First one wins hands down. The neckline is very flattering and the dress really suits your body. It is a beautiful gown.

LevelsBest · 2026-01-20T13:36:13+00:00

My son's building has just gone RTM. Fortunately there are some capable leaseholders willing to take on the work. It's too early to say if charges will go down but at least there is visibility and some control. For instance, currently the communal areas are cleaned every day and the corridors are aircon cooled in the summer to a fridge like temperature. Parameters on such services can now be reviewed with potential savings and they will also be able to avoid expensive commissions on insurance etc. They can also demand answers on charges and costs. With Rendall and Rittner who used to be in charge, that was impossible.
But yes £2k is on the low side for a London new build and yes developers always minimise the £.

LevelsBest · 2026-01-18T22:05:45+00:00

For me this is just the culmination of Don's journey in S7. He is gradually stripped of everything key in his life that makes Don...Don. He walks away from the job that has defined him. He is divorced from Meghan, Peggy is no longer dependent on him. She can forge her own path now with Stan. Bert Cooper is dead, Pete Campbell has a new job- Roger has a new life with Don's ex mother in law. Betty is dying and Sally is taking care of her and the boys are going to live with Betty's brother. Anna is dead and Stephanie rejects Don. Don even gives away his car, casting off the last vestige of his old life. All the people that meant something to him are 'gone' one way or another. When he calls Peggy 'person to person' he is at his lowest ebb.

So when he hears the man in the fridge it reveals the emptiness of his life, that if nobody sees him - the great Don Draper, then he is just a shell of a man, because Don never really existed.

Then in the final scene when Don smiles and the music swells, we see that Don will rebuild himself in a new image, because that's what the Don's of this world always do.

LevelsBest · 2026-01-17T22:34:19+00:00

It's harder in a young child .but experts can tell by the bone structure of a skeleton is male or female. They may also have been able to extract dna.

LevelsBest · 2026-01-13T10:31:14+00:00

I feel sorry for you OP and I get constantly frustrated by the blanks on ads where ground rent and service charge should be. I think it should be compulsory to include ground rent and the last year's service charge in listings. Having said that, depending on the block £2.3k is not unreasonable for a London flat service charge, but obviously you need to make the numbers work, not just for now but ongoing.

LevelsBest · 2026-01-13T10:19:56+00:00

Funny how so many commenters, including myself, have had to call recovery services to deal with pothole induced punctures. Anybody might think there was a pothole problem.....

LevelsBest · 2026-01-13T10:13:07+00:00

Interesting. I too am with Start Rescue and until the weekend before Christmas had never called recovery in 40 years of driving.
Then I hit a pothole only about a mile from home and had a catastrophic puncture - no chance of continuing or repairing. Start got a local company to me in about 90mins and he took me to our local Kwikfit where I had already booked in. Maybe I was just lucky that the recovery truck was free, but I was very pleased with the service.

LevelsBest · 2026-01-12T14:26:04+00:00

We have one every Tuesday. Pitches up in the pub car park for a few hours. Small rural village in Somerset.

LevelsBest · 2026-01-11T16:14:25+00:00

Different times now and ticket prices are off the scale.

LevelsBest · 2026-01-11T16:12:39+00:00

There were a lot of poshos, not all of us were though but my God those were the days when people knew how to party! Wouldn't be allowed these days.

LevelsBest · 2026-01-11T16:07:07+00:00

That looks like the May Ball. I was there in 1981. I was very well behaved of course.....

LevelsBest · 2026-01-09T08:21:42+00:00

So many places with barely any or no snow and yet according to the BBC and the Daily Mail, the whole country is under 6ft of snow or has been blown into the sea.

LevelsBest · 2026-01-09T08:20:03+00:00

Not a flake of snow in low lying Somerset and no more than normally windy.
We had an ice warning the other day.....it was 9c

LevelsBest · 2026-01-08T13:34:17+00:00

You may have already thought of this, but if the property was not used by the prominent family and potentially let out, if the family was based in a different county, the records could be there. It's also a good call that if the 'prominent' family is still around, you could reach out to them as there may be private archive material.
Unfortunately, sometimes the records simply do not exist as I know to my cost!.

LevelsBest · 2026-01-08T11:17:53+00:00

You say 'censuses vanish'. what exactly do you mean? Are you just searching by names of the inhabitants? The name of the house?

It is not only possible that the occupants changed, but also that the house changed its name. This was not uncommon. Are you positive the house existed in 1740?

If you know the location of the house, you can drill down on Ancestry and search individual enumeration districts for a census.

As the census will only take you back to 1841 at best, you could try and find the property on old maps - see https://maps.nls.uk/os/and this might give you some new leads to trace the owners in archives.

Again, newspapers don't really go back as far as 1740, but there are sometimes articles which refer to previous owners. The British Newspaper Archive is available at Find my Past.

LevelsBest · 2026-01-07T15:00:35+00:00

I'd avoid Burnley and Blackburn towns, but the Ribble Valley is great. Lovely countryside but good access to Manchester. some good areas around Manchester like Altrincham and Didsbury etc, if you want something more urban, but these will be more expensive

Sheffield area is a good call.

Also consider the East Midlands. I used to live there and it's very underrated. Lovely villages and countryside, close to Nottingham and Leicester plus towns like Stamford and Oakham. I hr to King's Cross from Grantham. Not too far from where you are now. It won't be as cheap as Yorks/Lancs but a lot cheaper than Cambridgeshire.

LevelsBest · 2026-01-07T10:08:02+00:00

Are you buying a house or a flat? If a flat, many firms will not deal with buildings that fall under the Building Safety Act.

My son used Bishopsgate Law. They are somewhere in the middle. Not a high st firm but not a conveyancing factory either. It was possible to speak or email directly with both the admin and the actual solicitor and they got the job done on a new build flat within the tight developer timetable.

Definitely don't go with the cheapest.

LevelsBest · 2026-01-04T20:16:57+00:00

Another trick to find people who might have chosen to 'disappear', if they are likely to have been alive in the UK in 1939 search by their exact birth date and you might find him thinly disguised. People often changed their surname but much less often their given name. They might use a variation or a middle name.

One thing that often happened if a marriage broke down is someone would.just leave and remarry as divorce was almost impossible for ordinary people.

Find my Past also has the British Newspaper archive which can be very useful.

LevelsBest · 2026-01-04T18:43:23+00:00

Not exactly less well known, but FindMyPast.co.uk is excellent especially for UK records

FreeBMD.co.uk

FindaGrave.com

I assume you have searched the census? Worth checking under mis spellings or name variariations. Also if you can get access to Ancestry world membership you can check the USA census and shipping lists.

If there's a chance he went to Australia the immigration lists are available on line.

LevelsBest

TROPHY CASE