It
was a joke!
Bloody hell! It was a joke, for crying out loud! It was only a joke! How on earth did I end up with a sore arse
because of a joke? Alex has no sense of
humour whatsoever; Christ knows how he survives Red Nose Day without falling
into a decline.
Jokes are meant to
end up with people laughing, not with me howling and snivelling and wishing I’d
never heard of the Compulsory Purchase Orders for the houses in Howlets &
Brampton Road which both run behind our local High Road. They were going to be knocked down to make
way for a new slip road that siphoned off the traffic through the main shopping
street leaving it a cross between a pedestrian zone and a bus lane.
Well, you hear
about things like that and you start to think, don’t you? I mean, it was the March 19th and
we all know what’s on the horizon! And
here was a chance to do it on a grand scale.
I HAD to do it … you do see that, don’t you?
No one else stormed
down the Town Hall to complain! Alex
says that’s probably because all the rest of them know me and whenever
something like this happens they must automatically think, ‘Is this something
to do with Peter?’ and then they come and check with him first before acting on
it. It’s a case of once bitten twice shy
he says because at one time or another they have all been stung by me – just
not as bad as I’ve now been stung by Alex doing a rerun of The Attack of the
Killer Bees.
He says I can’t
blame our new neighbour for not knowing what I’m like and for believing the
letter that was pushed through her letterbox, especially as it came in an
official borough envelope. I bloody
can! Anyone with an ounce of sense would
have known that it couldn’t be true, all she had to do was think about it for a
minute, not get on her high horse and gallop down to see the sheriff and kick
up a stink. I mean come on, would you
believe it.
April 1st
2006
Dear Occupier,
Newbridge County
Council is pleased to announce that due to the enthusiasm and support shown by
the residents of Brighton Road, work on the amplification of said thoroughfare
will commence in September of this year.
Thanks to the approval given through the survey completed in January 2006,
wherein 67% of all residents approved the donation of 3 foot from each front
garden in order to accommodate said amplification and this majority, together
with by-law 234.56 sub-section 3b, allows for the compulsory purchase of
aforementioned land. As stated in our
January survey, the purchase will be compensated by a reduction in council tax
for a period of 3 years.
Yours truly,
J Oak (Planning
Dept.)
Newbridge County
Council
Well, OK, you
might, but only for a minute, yeah? Er
…thirty seconds? You wouldn’t start
spouting off about you having only just moved in 3 weeks ago and you
hadn’t agreed to anyone taking away part of your garden, and going on about
threatening to sue the survey people who are supposed to discover future plans
when they do their searches.
God, I nearly
fainted when I heard all the commotion at the public enquiries desk and went
out to see what was going on. I got
there just in time to hear Mr Johnston (a right snitty Jobs-worth if ever there
was one) tell her frostily that there was no such plans for amplification of any
roads in the borough and that Newbridge County Council did not bargain for bits
of gardens with local residents in return for a discount on their rubbish
collection and would she please look at the date written on the letter
and think about it logically. She looked
and, I must admit, I’ve never seen anyone go puce coloured in such a short time
span, unless it’s Alex of course when he’s caught me doing something I
shouldn’t.
Unfortunately, she
then looked up and saw me, and I think it clicked! I work there you see, I do CAD-CAM work for
the council in their planning department as a temporary contractor, that’s how
I was able to get hold of the official paper and envelopes. Her lips went all pursed and her eyes
narrowed enough to give me the willies and I darted back into my office and hid
behind my computer screen. If looks
could kill, I would be pushing up daisies this very minute.
I didn’t get
spanked for it by the way, even though Her-Next-Door complained to Alex at the
first opportunity about jokes in very poor taste, by the time I got home he had
calmed down a bit and when I told him that it was almost a matter of national
pride to play tricks on people, I got off with having to go and apologise to
Her Dragonship. She gave me a look like
I was beyond understanding, and I came away from there with a flea in my ear
and not happy.
No, it was what
happened afterwards that earned me a spanking.
Now I’m not saying
anything about women drivers, I wouldn’t dare, but our neighbour has to be one
of those who just fits the cliché. …and
her parking? I don’t think she’s
satisfied until she’s hit the kerb at least three times and had a go either at
the bumper in front or the one behind.
This morning I could hear her, back and forth, back and forth, then a
great screeching noise which I assumed was her gears grinding and she stalled
at least once in trying to get out from between the cars parked either side of
her, one of which was ours, unfortunately.
When I went to get
in the car to go and pick Alex up from the station, we had a bloody great dent
in the front of our bumper that sort of went in at the middle and bent out at
the end that I was sure wasn’t there yesterday, and I just knew it was her, I knew
it.
Vindictive cow, you
could have got a tank through the gap that she had pulled out of, there was no
way it was unintentional. She did it to
get me back for the April Fool’s joke.
The thing was, I couldn’t prove it, I hadn’t seen her do it and if I
accused her of it she’d deny it for sure.
So I was stuck and getting madder by the minute. Also, the bumper on the car needed to be
sorted out and that was going to be expensive and why should we have to pay for
it, when it was all her fault.
So I got one of my
genius plans and decided to fix it myself.
Now I know that I shouldn’t really have done this, but the other car
that had been to the other side of her was gone so there was room and it was
the middle of the afternoon and no one was about – one of the wonders of
working flexi-time. So I drove our car
up onto the pavement and tried to bend the bumper back in by gently
revving up against the brick gate support that bordered our two gardens. At that point it all went horribly
wrong.
I spent the next
hour – after putting the car back in the road – researching earthquake reports
in the UK to try and back up my story that our street had been hit by a tremor
of at least 6.5 on the Richter scale and yes, isn’t it weird that the only
thing affected was the gate support between numbers 15 & 17 which had
collapsed bringing the dividing fence down with it.
I was stressing
like mad by now and of course I forgot about picking up Alex at the station so
when my mobile rang and I saw his number I did what anyone would do in the same
situation – I turned it off and hid in the bathroom.
Well, if you had
seen his face when he walked through the door 45 minutes later, not at all
happy that I wasn’t there to meet him and him being unable to get through on
the phone. He’d gotten a taxi from the
station and told me he nearly shit a brick when he saw the state of our
crumbled wall and fence, he didn’t mention the dent in the car though, I
reckoned I could get away with that one, well it worked after a fashion, the
bumper went back in. Sort of.
“Why did you do
it? What was it, misguided revenge or
sheer laziness? You must have known that
it would go wrong. I want an answer
Peter – and DON’T start with the crocodile tears!” – bugger; I didn’t know he
knew I did that.
I was so shocked by
this that I sort of confessed – I can’t believe it, I actually volunteered
information before I was across his knee getting my backside walloped every
which way. I didn’t mean to confess; I
was getting narky that he wouldn’t drop it so I snapped at him, laying doom
firmly over my own head bottom, and said ‘Well, it was six of one, half
dozen of the other, if you must know’, in that sneery way guaranteed to piss
off Tops worldwide.
That’s when his
eyes narrowed and he smiled at me with a distinct lack of cheer saying politely
‘Thank you for the suggestion.’ ‘What!’
‘What suggestion?’ I managed to splutter as he grabbed me by the collar and
marched me into the dining room. Oh
shit! This is where we keep ‘The
Things’. You know, THE THINGS. The hairbrush, the slipper – I’m telling you,
if Lloyd Grossman ever peaked through our keyhole, God knows what the audience
would think.
Before I knew what
hit me, and before anything had actually hit me, my trousers had emigrated
south for the winter and I was doing a dive across Alex’s lap that would have
had Esther Williams gnashing her teeth in envy.
I don’t get The Things often you know, normally it’s only his hand -
although I don’t think you can ever really say ‘only his hand’; his hand
is nigh on a lethal weapon in it’s own right – but The Things are saved for
something fairly serious. So when he
whips out both the slipper AND the hairbrush, I started sweating buckets –
Christ he was going to make me choose, no way, I hate both of them, there’s no
way I can pick one.
The slipper stings
like Fuck and the hairbrush feels like it’s trying to make a permanent imprint
on my bum for posterity. Didn’t happen
though - I didn’t have to choose I mean, and before you all croon ‘Aww, isn’t
Alex good to him’ – no he’s not! As he
made himself comfortable and prepared himself for making me very un, he pulled both
within easy reach on the table and announced, “Six of one, half dozen of the
other” it is then!”
And the revenge was
very misguided actually because it turned out that the fence between our two
properties is ours, so we have to pay to put it back up. When Her-Next-Door came demanding that a 6 foot fence be erected
topped by barbed wire, Alex calmly explained that our emergency fund was being
spent on a new bumper for the car, and that a new fence would become priority
after that, if at all. She went puce
again funny enough.
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