The obvious arguments are raging at the moment about whether global warming exists and, if so, whether we should be panicking that it is 23 degrees on a Friday in April. These same people have complained bitterly about the wind, rain and general grey of the English winter. I’m with them. Hate winter- the English one I mean. The unrelenting grey eats away at your soul in a very Jane Eyre way. I have a SAD alarm clock that is supposed to help the body adjust better to the lack of natural light but by January I am hanging on to my sanity by nails that are bitten to the quick.
But as much as I loathe winter, I loathe summer more. I used to be a real sun worshipper, and when my parents lived in Cairo I spent entire summers reading my way through a small mountain of non-academic books by the pool, and loved it. These days I hole up in the house, windows and doors closed, with the fan on full blast. Because of one man. Our next door neighbour sees the first ray of sun as a signal to strip off his T-shirt and do things that require the bonnet of one of his THREE cars to be propped open, an engine to rev endlessly and the sound system, which churns out hard-core music with a great deal of enthusiasm, to be turned up so that the lovely man from Liverpool can block out one noise with another.
It never used to be thus. When we moved in to the house, our perfectly polite-if unattractive- neighbour dropped off a begonia to welcome us and put us on nodding terms. A year later she casually leaned over the fence- of which more later- and announced that they were “selling the aaaas (house in pikey)”. Turned out she’d kicked out the husband in her-unfounded if you believe the other neighbours- belief that he’d been seeing another woman. He got out at the right time, as far as I can tell.
Shortly after she tried to sell the aaaas, she got together with the incredible non-speaking gardener who was ceremoniously dumped and replaced with the much-louder car loving cretin. And all whilst we were on honeymoon. Now we get sympathetic looks from all the neighbours when they realise we live next door to ‘them at 31’. We all became curtain-twitchers when the screaming started one night at about 11pm. I looked out in time to see mother dragging daughter into the house by the hair, all the while screaming “I’m gonna f**king kill you, you slag”. Daughter responded with “Get off me, somebody help, she’s going to kill me!”
I’d like to erect a force-field to protect myself. Sadly where the force field should be, there is a three foot high picket fence, a vestige of the good relationship the former owners of our house had with our charming neighbours. A friend suggested replacing it with an 18 foot brick wall with spikes on the top. Not a bad idea. The one time I had a man come and measure up, she went nuts at him and he never came back. So when I had to get the house painted, I approached their front door with trepidation. With good reason since they put up a number of piffling objections to our putting scaffolding up on their land in order to repair our gables. Then, a week later there was a change of heart. It seems that the foot long cracks appearing in her walls mean that the entire back of her house needs rebuilding and underpinning. Which means taking down the loathed fence-with delightful view of her ‘swimming pool’, complete with frolicking fondling teenagers in Burberry bikinis. And possibly even our conservatory, if a builder friend is to be believed.
So not only will do we have a clear chance to paint the house, we will also be able to get the fence we want. And hopefully we will never have to see our pikey neighbours again. I might check out the property pages though, just in case.
