Subtitle. Maybe we should be wary of people who have guillotines instead of windows.
To understand British windows you need metaphysics, or a PhD in engineering, or a big heart.
They include several anomalies for the price of one.
The first, most obvious, oddity is that they open from the bottom up. One might think that this is a way like any other to interpret the opening of a window, but this is not the case.
In fact, the opening towards the outside is logical, the British one is not logical. Sorry for the frankness.
First of all, a window must open TO the outside, it must be able to OPEN WIDE.
British windows cannot be opened wide and this also reflects their concept of home. It’s the same with their micro-corridors (see: Sub-anomaly of narrow entrances).
Apart from cheap psychiatry, the lack of logic is given by the fact that it is not easy to perform a common and banal act such as "OPENING the WINDOW".
Especially when they are made of wood, in old houses, it takes two hands and the strength of Rocky Balboa to open a window.
The operation is made unpleasant by the fact that there are no knobs or handles to cling to.
The modus operandi is therefore the following: after having unlocked the release device (which can also be double), you push the upper part of the window block to be lifted with the fingertips.
It hurts a little bit.
As soon as you manage to gain 2 or 3 cm at the bottom, you quickly insert your fingers into the opening and try to pull up the block.
QUICKLY, I said. Otherwise the block will fall on your fingers, breaking them, since it weighs 400kg.
If you can make this gesture quickly and your fingers are safe, with an abominable effort you will finally be able to RAISE (not open) the window.
This does not mean that it will remain up. In fact, the force of gravity will cause the block to fall down. This could also happen abruptly. There is a complicated system of ropes that should prevent the window from being transformed into a guillotine, but it doesn't always work.
Not that a LOCAL has ever thought of looking out the window, but in case you want to try it, know that there is a risk of ending up like Marie Antoinette.
Some elementary safety sticks might come in handy (see picture below).
As previously mentioned, the window raising system is made complicated / impossible by the safety closure. Which is not unique, but comes in different complex forms.
Considering the study time of the engineering used, it takes about twenty minutes to open a window in UK.
The good news is that the closure rarely works, so the windows are never really closed, for the joy of thieves.
This depends on the fact that the heavy wooden blocks lose the correct alignment and the closure cannot work.
In the absence of the closure, the block above tends to fall down, again by gravity, and therefore the wooden windows will always be a little open, about 2 cm in my experience.
In winter this is not always pleasant, especially in a windy area like Cambridge. You are on the sofa watching television and a not too gentle breeze (= cold air) ruffles your hair.
And you ask yourself: why? Isn't it extremely annoying to have wind in the house in the middle of winter? Don't the natives get annoyed by it?
The answer is VERY COMPLEX. Follow me.
The natives were certainly annoyed, and therefore adapted by placing aluminium windows with double glazing, much smaller than the previous ones and watertight.
Certainly more suitable for a northern European country
All good that ends well, you say. But NO!
The aluminium windows close well, there are no more drafts ... and the whole house rots!
The United Kingdom is a very humid country, it rains a lot.
For unfathomable reasons, construction has chosen a playful path over the centuries in this Country and the houses are built like beach bungalows (See: the Anomaly of the British toy houses). There are no foundations and the crawl space consists of a gap of 15 cm under the boards of the ground floor, so ALL the humidity that can enter the house will enter, also thanks to thin walls, flues etc.
This humidity needs a vent and the "important draft" windows were a severe but fair solution.
Anyway, all this is for naught; the real drama is yet to come.
The real drama lies in the fact that there is absolutely no possibility of cleaning the outside of the windows, absolutely none!
I tried in every way, but without results.
In order to clean the windows, you need to call a company.
They will come, equipped with a very long stick- even 5 floors long!!! - and with a titanic effort they will clean your windows. A complicated, expensive, dangerous operation.
Can you see the guy in trouble manoeuvring the rod up to the fourth floor?
This is anomalous.
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