Recently I have realised that I have become a snob and a far from ideal socialist. The reason for this is that we have new neighbours. Our previous neighbour was an old lady who had lived at the address for a very long time, but her declining years and the pressure from her sons forced her to move to sheltered accommodation somewhere else in the district. She didn’t want to go. We didn’t want her to go – but change comes whether you like it or not.
The house next door is a big, nicely kept two-bedroomed semi-detached (like ours) and I was expecting a young family or similar to be rehoused there by the council. In fact, I was kind of looking forward to it. What we got was a middle-aged gentlemen with a bad leg and his 21-year-old semi-retarded son (a young man so dense that when his father had a spasm in his leg, he went indoor and let his father descend the concrete stairs on his behind – a guy so lethargic that even his father has said to the Missus that he needs a good kick up the arse). I spoke to the father soon after they moved in and he seemed friendly enough, but like all people, I quickly became irritated by their imperfections.
Their first sin was the fact that they brought three cars with them. And these aren’t nice shiny cars, but right old bangers, meaning that our spacious little street now looks like a breakers yard…and one of these cars is of very dubious origins. It has been left outside our other property to basically rust – having not been moved – but the tyres have been allowed to deflate and oil to leak over the road. OK – they like cars and you don’t – so get over it, you whinging creep. But I hate car owners in general. I even moan at The Missus for having a car that we don’t use much, so no-one is safe from my anti-car bias. (Of course, I happily allow myself to be driven to the aquarium shop and to music concerts – the hypocrite).
The next thing I had an issue with was the fact that these fellows didn’t seem to have any concept of putting the rubbish out for the weekly refuse collection on a Thursday. Recently, temperatures have been in the 30s and there’s nothing better to spoil lunch in my garden than the pungent stench of rotten rubbish to come wafting down our shared alleyway where they’ve left there rubbish (we leave our bin bags there too, but I put them out every week to be taken away). The smell got so bad that I took matters into my own hands and put their rubbish out for them last week….all four bags of it. No, no, no…don’t thank me. I was doing it for myself and my own nostrils. Me and Mr Bluebottle have become firm enemies and I even had to chase one out of our bedroom at midnight last week – such was the pong eminating from the alley. Or maybe he was attracted by the hum from my socks…?
Of course, while this goes on the front and back gardens have been left to overgrow. Now the previous occupant loved her garden and used to employ a gardener to keep it spick and span, despite being a pensioner of limited income. But now the grass is high like the Serengheti plains and I half expect a tigress to come bounding out after a startled wildebeeste. It kind of depresses me that things always seem to change for the worst and never the better.
So why does this bother me? Well the way people treat their homes whether they are council rented or private owned/rented is a good indication of what those people are like. Our example don’t seem to care much for the garden, which is a shame and I can see a future when old car engines will litter the front lawn and a broken down Jeep is worked on out the back garden. You might think this a joke, but I’ve seen this in other council properties in the area. It is the creeping cancer of the underclass – those without any commonsense or pride in their environment.
So there you have it. I am officially a snob and I don’t like my unemployed neighbours. I resent them for not keeping their council property clean and tidy while I am asked to fork out £100 a month on council tax to keep them in it. Of course, I just wrote a cheque to the tax man the other day and this has left me feeling a little sensitive too. But I’ve said to the Missus that this is a drip-drip-drip kind of decline and things will soon get a lot worse. She isn’t a big fan of them either as they look at her in a funny way that only women can detect and they officially give her the creeps. (This is unusual as it usually takes a lot to phase out The Missus).
But the line in the sand was drawn tonight when I was talking to Alex the Wonderdog through our kitchen window. I was cooking the dinner and Alex was in the garden being cheeky and I said: “Whooseagoodboy?” or something and he barked back and kicked up some grass and I said “Whooseagoodboy?” and he did it again in canine joy and a little doggy smile on his face. That’s the kind of owner-pet relationship we have. From a window next door a loud, uncouth “Shuddduppp!” echoed in our general direction. This was from the son, who ruined a perfectly peaceful Sunday afternoon yesterday by revving a petrol driven engine for a remote control car for 30 minutes until he got bored. No, you shut-up, fuckwit.
No-one bad mouths Alex the Wonderdog and gets away with it…

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