Yesterday was a strange day and I didn’t quite feel myself. I had a dull ache in my lower back/kidney area and I wasn’t sure if this was the stress of recent events or some side effect. The Missus spoke to the neighbours that live the other side to the grease monkeys and when she told Big Phil what had gone on he said: “Well it’s obvious – they are cleaning car parts in there.” He then went onto describe how they are kept awake all hours of the night by the sound of heavy objects being moved around and banging and tapping. “They never sleep,” said Phil, remarking that when he goes off to work at 5am they are still up and working.
I feel a lot better today and the pain in my back has gone. Mind you, after I heard that yesterday, I started drinking lots of water because I was scared that I’d been poisoned by some kind of industrial cleaning solvent. After writing this entry, I shall be picking up the phone and speaking to the local council. And so the battle for normality begins…
Category: Diary
Wow, what an exciting few days at Chez Lock. I’ve mentioned before about our neighbours, Brian The Liar and his Idiot Bastard Son and how last week they dumped a load of engine parts on their front lawn last week. Now things took a turn for the worse on Friday and I was taking Alex the Wonderdog out for a drag when I noticed that Brian the Liar and IBS, plus an unknown grubby assailant, were scurrying too and fro their house with used car parts in their oily little mitts (except they were all wearing latex gloves to protect their little handy-wandies). This preturbed me as I thought it was all going in the back garden.
So anyway, when I gets back to the house with Alex, I have a sneaky peak out the back window and there are a few bits and bobs there, but not the amount that I saw taken into the dwelling. When The Missus came home I told her my story and insisted that we sell up and move on immediately – we have Neighbours from Hell. That night I went to bed and I noticed a strange smell coming from the neighbours wall. I didn’t think much of it as I descended into sleep.
During the night I awoke several times, feeling nausea and sickness, which is not like me unless I’ve been caning it on the ale. I thought about getting up and being sick in the bathroom, but everytime I considered this the waves of nausea didn’t seem so bad and I drifted back to slumber. While this was going on, my sleep was disrupted by Alex the Wonderdog who was pacing the floor and couldn’t get comfortable.
Saturday morning I awoke relatively early and felt really sick. Me and The Missus scurried out leaving Alex the Wonderdog behind so we could get the morning papers and some milk with relative ease. During our breakfast, I heard Alex making a noise and when I called him into the kitchen, I realised that he had been sick all over the sofa. He enjoys a nap on the sofa in the mornings (and in the afternoons and evenings too) and he’s never been sick on it before. Normally when he is feeling bilious he goes to the back door.
By now, alarm bells were ringing because my nausea was getting worse and this acoompanied by sore eyes and throat. During the morning, I noticed the Idiot Bastard Son taking more car yard junk into the house – bumpers, exhausts, buckets of oily debri – not very palatable at all. When Brian the LIar made an appearance, I made my move and asked him what he thought he was doing.
I told him that I didn’t fancy living next to a breakers yard much and warned him that he had a nice council given house and that he should be careful not to lose it. His reply was that a garage was being demolished and he had nowhere else to put the stuff and so the whole house was being filled with the kind of crap you’d expect to see at one of those oil strewn places where they wreck cars. He told me not to get stressed about it and that they would be sorting through the mess to keep the good stuff and throwing away the bad in the near future. I did my best to explain to him that you can’t turn a domestic dwelling into a mechanic’s storage facility, but the guy is so pig ignorant that he just stared right through me. And so I told him about the bad smell, the sickness and nausea and how sick Alex had been. I told him to fix it or get reported and walked away with him blabbering some lies as I left.
I was firm but fair with the guy, but on reflection I realise that I am on a losing streak. This guys are a bit soft in the head if they think living with half an engine under the stairs is normal. I also discussed with him about the various strange cars that had been appearing and disappearing from outside our house. It is obvious that he is holding some dodgy motors for his pals. Again, he denied it was anything to do with him and even said that the current black Ford Modeo that was parked there belonged to a man around the corner. LIttle did he know that while on another walk with Alex the other week, I’d spied the Idiot Bastard Son checking the car out. So Brian the Liar wasn’t that good a liar. I subsequently discovered that the aforementioned “man around the corner” had a word with Brian the Liar on Friday. Apparently, he was narked that all these mysterious motors had appeared and prevented his wife – who has just had a baby – from parking in their desired spot, meaning that she has to make a longer journey. He wanted to know what these cars were about, but Brian the LIar just ignored him.
While we were out Saturday afternoon, I was informed that another van appeared and more and more junk was loaded into the house. When we got home the smell was just as bad and last night we moved our bed away from the wall, turned it around, so that we could sleep with our faces as far away from the chemical stench as possible.
Tomorrow, I shall be contacting Environmental Health about this and reporting these idiots to the council. While I don’t mind people having a hobby and being interested in cars, I do take exception to slowly being poisoned by the noxious fumes eminating from their house.
I’ll keep y’all posted. And if you hear nothing from me, you’ll know that I have succumbed to the vile vapours seeping through the walls.
Apparently this is my 500th entry to this weblog. I am not sure if I have any loyal readers anymore. Scouring the stats, it seems I might have scared them all away. Good. Anyway, for anyone who remains, here’s some crazy playing that will, I guarantee, send you mad if you watch it to the end. Enjoy!
http://xyzwebdesign.com/sanbass/sanbass.swf
Alex the Wonderdog has no respect for the expensive devices in his master’s home studio
Yup – that heavyweight hound is using a Roland V-Bass unit as a custom doggy pillow and a Korg Pandora PX4A acoustic processor as a canine back support.
Or visit my YouTube page.
At the end of last month, I had a good old fashioned whinge about our new, scummy next-door neighbours. Yes, I am sure that under the layers of dirt and grease that they are really nice blokes, but I predicted that it wouldn’t be long before there would be a car engine in the front garden. Well what do I see this lunchtime???
Is that an engine I see before me?
I’m sorry, but this is all getting so fucking boring now. Why does life have to be so blooming-well predictable? Thanks to the local council, our future will be a mixture of car parts and spilt oil and I thank them for it from the bottom of my heart. Why can’t these people make the effort and keep their council-given property in a decent condition?
I know that a lot of money has been spent on the house next door putting in new double glazing and a new roof, all this work subsidised by the council tax I pay, so why can’t these ingrates meet us halfway and keep their property in a decent condition? Why? Because they don’t care. Because to them, the car is king. To them it is more important to have an oily engine in their front garden than to bother to put their rubbish out or mow the lawn or have a wash.
Oh god, I feel about 75 years old now, waving my walking stick and shaking my fist at the world in impotent fury. Why did they have to move in next door and scum up the place so quickly? Why couldn’t we have had a nice family who actually deserved the property? Because nice families go out to work and break their balls trying to make ends meet instead of riding the gravy train.
I give up, I really do give up.
At the weekend, the Missus and I endeavoured to clear out the cupboard under the stairs. It was a job that needed doing and one chore we’d put off for a long, long time. At the back of this cupboard was a large box and several full plastic carrier bags, the contents of which were the combined written output of us both. Sunday was spent making cuttings from the various magazines and today I finally finished the job. It is quite odd looking back and seeing all the various reviews and features you’ve written over the years – it’s like a flicker book of your professional life. Now I am thinking that I might start scanning these items and putting them on the site to create the ultimate shrine to my talents. 😉
Of course, I jest. Putting them on the site isn’t a chance to flex my ego but to show any potential employers that I have the necessary credentials and experience to write. It was never my idea to keep the mags in the first place, that was all The Missus’s idea – she likes the idea of keeping hold of that kind of stuff. So maybe I’ll start scanning and uploading pics in the near future. It’s going to be a quite a job.
This evening, I am gripped by a stomach cramp. Not had an attack for a while and can’t think why I am in so much pain. I’ve been eating well, not drinking and getting enough sleep. I am hoping that this is just a minor cramp and not one that lasts a couple of days, otherwise I might just stay in bed tomorrow. The pain truly is excrutiating.
In the post: Fat Boy Slim – Why Try Harder (LTD Edition with Bonus DVD). I only bought this because the video “Weapon of Choice” features the Marriott Downtown in LA, which I stayed at for my 30th birthday and the video was shot just a couple of months before. So it is kind of a nice memory of exploring that hotel. The music ain’t bad either and sometimes I have to indulge my dance itch. Right here, RIght now, indeed…