A spoonful of sugar.

Wayne & Waynetta

Hot of the press, there’s another community meeting next week. It’s an opportunity to unload to the Local Authority and find out how much money we don’t have to finish demolishing and developing our street, though to give them their due they are acknowledging the lack of progress and asking for our input, but it will remain to be seen if they are willing to take us up on any of them. But I’d better pace myself, it can’t all be forward thinking and positive. So after the delights of Ricky and Bianca in my last post, today I give you Wayne and Waynetta.

This charming couple lived in the flat under Ricky and Bianca with their unfortunate offspring, or rather Waynetta did. Wayne would visit his lovely lady-friend and their ill-fated spawn wearing his school uniform on the nights he didn’t have detention, and if this doesn’t give you enough of an insight into the general tone of what’s to come just read the next sentence. I often saw Wayne gobbing copious amounts of phlegm onto the pavement as he slouched his way towards Waynetta’s with his angry little fists shoved into his easy care trouser pockets his acne pitted brow furrowed in deep thought – or he could just have looked like that generally.

W & W were the couple most responsible for the never-ending and mind melting playing of Billy Ray Cyrus at all hours of the day and night, the sound turned up so loud it distorted and hurt your ears and for that alone I can never forgive them.

It was pretty shit living next door to them to be honest. Ricky & Bianca were bad enough but their disturbances were sporadic and at least they looked shamefaced when you saw them afterwards, but not our little white trash neighbours. These enchanting little scumbags contributed little to the local community, the economy or most distressingly for their progeny, the gene pool.

I became very familiar with the Peabody Trust who managed the flat next door. Waynetta was the main focus of the noise diaries that I kept. When she wasn’t screaming at her sweet toddling baby (and he was a sweetheart), smashing things in her flat, screaming at Wayne, standing in the street and yes you guessed it screaming, she was playing loud music and staggering about like an inebriated fishwife at all hours of the day and night.

I hope you can understand why I have zero tolerance for noisy neighbours, I really do feel I’ve had my fair share. It’s coming up to ten years since I left London so some of my memories of Waynetta are a little fuzzy but I do remember that it was pretty grim.

If I remember correctly my housemate S and I decided to contact Social Services about the obvious neglect that the little boy was subjected to on a regular basis. The final straw came when we found him wondering the street by himself at about 11 p.m. He can’t have been anymore than two years old. Waynetta was unconscious inside her pit and hadn’t bothered to lock the front door, or even shut it.

I recall that my flatmate was very disappointed at the reaction she got when she called for the Local Authority for advice, something along the lines of us being judgemental busybodies.  I mean what parent hasn’t got smashed off their tits on Benylin and Thunderbirds/MD 20/20 and abdicated all responsibility for her offspring leaving them unsupervised in the middle of the road at midnight?!

My biggest memory of Waynetta was one hot summer’s evening. She stood outside her house near to Midnight with her posse drinking Red Stripe lager and smoking fags and yes you guessed it shrieking with her mates. We were in the living room with the window open to let a welcome breeze into the house.

We were debating whether or not to move to the kitchen to avoid the intrusive drivel from outside. Waynetta’s little boy was staggering around her and we could hear him chattering and pleading away, “Mummy tired. Mummy bed” repeating it over and over, as toddlers are want to do and trying to get the attention of a ‘responsible’ adult. He could barely stand and just wanted to go to sleep.  Unfortunately for him the focus of his pleading couldn’t have cared less.

Her response was one of the most gobsmacking things I think I have ever heard a mother say to her child without a single hint of irony.

With a half baked expression on her face, a half smoked fag in one hand and a can of lager in the other she slurred her angry response to the little fellah’s cry for attention.

“F***ing shut-up Ryan. I can’t be Mary Poppins all the f***ing time!”

Let’s be honest Waynetta, just once would’ve been nice.