Scratching at the Surface

You may remember a blog post of a few weeks ago dealing with mysterious goings on in my street. I felt under an obligation to uncover what I felt was the murky truth of the matter, for research purposes only of course. Sadly I didn’t uncover the truth of that particular matter but in attempting to do so, I unwittingly stumbled upon a much bigger and altogether darker story.

Picture the scene if you will. A young teenager full of the joyful anticipation of young love gets a nasty wake up call when she discovers that her beloved is seeing someone else. Obviously she is distraught and keen to find out who the “other woman” is. Imagine her horror on discovering that the “other woman” was in fact her own mother. They say that “blood is thicker than water”, but so enraged was the teenager in question that spilling blood was in the forefront of her mind.

One day while her mother was gardening the girl saw her chance. Finding some handy garden twine (they don’t tell you in the shop but I believe it’s pretty good for this kind of thing) she attempted to strangle her mother. In the words of my 16 year old informant she “strangled her TO THE GROUND!” Quite why to the ground should be any more lethal than any other kind of strangulation I’m not sure but our 16 year old friend seemed to feel that it was. *

Happily (for the mother anyway we can assume) the strangulation itself was not lethal, the mother survived and the young man in question is now seeing neither the young strangler nor her mother (wise chap).

So you see, you may think that you live in a very quiet and unassuming street but to quote one Charlie Rich “no one knows what goes on behind closed doors”.



*To be honest there is just the outside chance that young J. has made up the whole thing but I hope not.

When I’m (Not) Cleaning Windows

I have, I fear, yet again been exposed as a disgrace to housewifery. The fact that I am neither anyone’s wife nor resident in my house for any lengths of time appears not to be the point. The heavy hand of Housewife’s Law fell upon me at the weekend when my next-door neighbour approached me. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you for a couple of weeks now” she said. Doesn’t your heart sink on hearing words such as these? They take you back to schooldays and the knowledge that some terrible punishment awaits for whichever one of your misdemeanours you have been found out this time.

“Morning” I said, affecting a weak smile and hoping that my apparent friendliness would diminish whatever cruel punishment awaited. “I’ve noticed that your windows are needing a bit of a clean” she stated. Now she does have a point. I have struggled to find a window cleaner for the last couple of months and my windows have become progressively darker to the point where they would soon have made effective WWII Blackout Curtains and if they were a van, someone would have written “plez cleen me” on them by now. I would imagine that introducing these darker tones to my windows was, in her estimation, lowering the tone of the neighbourhood somewhat. (She wants to live between a brothel and a drug den, but that’s an entirely different post.)

“Now I’m sure that you’re like me and you like clean windows,” she continued. On the evidence of my blackening windows I couldn’t think what could possibly have drawn her to that conclusion, but I felt that the only right and proper response was a resounding “Yes of course”. “Good” she said. “So I’ve organised for my window cleaner to clean your windows as well.” This was, you understand a statement of intent, which I could no less back out of than desist from breathing.

I thanked her profusely for her kindness and was about to hurry off when she hit me with her final thought. “And your parents have made such a good job of your garden”. Now that’s taking the cruelty too far because the person who has been slaving for hours at a time over a hot lawnmower, attempting to dodge death inducing blades, getting all manner of nastiness under her fingernails, and thereby not having the time to find a window cleaner has in fact been me. Thanks for that Mrs X..