Craggy Island

Well I’m back with another post in lieu of anything exciting happening on my street this week, other than a loud domestic one evening over the week-end that is. . It’s been a busy week in general for me, but we have another Group meeting next week so hopefully more news about actual regeneration then.

This post harks back to good old London town and some little anecdotes about yet another delightful couple move into an adjoining flat. As previously mentioned the house I rented with friends down in Battersea was flanked by flats on either side. On one side the improbably awful Wayne and Waynetta and the sporadically insane Ricky and Bianca above them – ahh the joy.

On the other side the ground floor flat was occupied by a lovely elderly gentleman, who for the purposes of this post I shall call Austin, and the upstairs flat that had been empty for some time. After a reorganisation of flatmates I moved to the upstairs main bedroom, which shared a wall with the living rooms of the upstairs flats on both sides.

About this time, I think possibly before I moved upstairs, one of my housemates, or it could have been me I genuinely forget now, bumped into Austin outside our front door. He was very keen to share the news that the flat above him was going to be occupied at last, but particularly pleased that his newly proposed neighbours had knocked on his door to introduce themselves and ask if it was a nice neighbourhood. 

Austin was delighted that they seemed to care about where they lived and wanted it to be somewhere quiet. This boded well for them he thought and he wanted us to be reassured, given the trouble we had with ‘the people on the other side’.

So the gossip was passed on and we awaited our new neighbours’ arrival. Soon enough they appeared, a middle aged couple who were pleasant and friendly and seemingly keen to make a good impression. They were really polite and always up for a chat when you saw them in the street for the first few weeks. Amazing, what could possibly go wrong!?

I don’t know if you’re familiar with the telly series Father Ted, but apart from being one of the funniest things on T.V.  ever, at least one lot of characters began to feel very familiar over the following few months. John and Mary O'Leary lived in the village on Craggy Island and ran a little shop. To the outside observer they were just like our new neighbours, polite and friendly and always happy to see you. But in private they were filled with a deep and destructive loathing of each other, just like our new neighbours. Yes you guessed it, another noise abatement issue had moved in next door.

It started off with the odd raised voice, mostly overheard through the wall of the upstairs bedroom which shared a wall with their living room, but gradually these altercations became more frequent and much louder. The intermittent bouts of domestic disturbance were fuelled by lovely alcohol but without any sound proofing on the walls to conceal it from their neighbours, we all got to listen in. The rows were abusive and vitriolic and the language, good heavens the language! 

“You effing C**t”, from her to him “You b**ch”, from him to her and “You lazy C**t” from her to him. Well mostly it was from her to him as I remember it. He was a man of few words; she was a woman who more than made up for his taciturn manner.

I think her liberal use of the ‘C’ word in private was all the more unsettling given her demeanour in public, which veered towards the Hyacinth Bucket when you bumped into them outside the front door. It was difficult to match up the public and private personas of the O’Learys but also because they were SO unlike our other challenging neighbours who couldn’t have given a toss what anyone thought of them, the O’Learys so obviously did care.

Though oddly they (and by ‘they’ I mean ‘she’) were less bothered about glossing over other areas of their private lives. I don’t know what it is about some people, but if a neighbour politely asks how you are they don’t actually want to know, unless they’re sitting next to your hospital bed or a very close friend. It’s a widely recognised social norm that this is a question that requires a non specific response. 

If you see someone on the street once a week and they say ‘Hello, how’re you?” for goodness sake DO reply “Oh you know, mustn’t grumble” (my Grandma’s favourite) or, “Fine thanks”. DO NOT go into great gynaecological detail about your latest surgical exploration – I DON’T WANT TO KNOW! Don’t use phrases like “stitches in my back passage” or talk about your prostate to a virtual stranger, Hell’s Teeth people preserve a little dignity! 

OK, now that’s out of my system let’s get back to the O’Learys. After a regular run down of her up and coming surgeries and his crippling back problems that rendered it difficult for him to work (though not too difficult to lift a pallet of beer out of the car I noticed on more than one occasion) we began to notice that his attitude shifted from the quiet down trodden hubby, to a man that realised he was living next door to three twenty something women in fancy London town. 

To be fair he wasn’t creepy, just excitable, particularly if we arrived at the front door at similar times say just after pub closing time. On a couple of occasions we had to step over him as he lay sleeping drunkenly across the doorstep or in his miniscule front yard, ahhh I feel quite nostalgic about it now. I’ve also just remembered the time I didn’t notice he was asleep outside his own house until my housemate pointed it out after I got in, he was tucked in under the hedge – bless.

We were generally less angry with them about their shouting than our other horrid neighbours, perhaps because we’re British and therefore too polite or maybe it’s just easier to confront someone you don’t discuss the weather with on a regular basis, but also because I think they so obviously thought it was a private matter. It didn’t spill out onto the street, well the drunken snoring stuff did but the nasty shouty stuff was all inside so we all just pretended that it didn’t happen. We even got used to it, the ever indispensible earplugs came in handy as did loud music with headphones on. The O’Learys’ disturbances were nowhere near as frequent as our other neighbours incidentally, they just added a little spice and intrigue to the mix.

Here’s a lovely link to a nice Father Ted O’Leary’s quote on IMDB

I couldn’t find a clip of The O’Learys but here are some clips on YouTube of Father Ted for those who’ve never seen it.

On Holiday

Charades

Newsletter

I’ve been away for a couple of weeks visiting friends and family up and down the country and have returned to cleared out bin yards, hurrah! It’s amazing how something so simple can make such a huge difference to an area, it’s taken a good few months but Leeds City Council came through in the end.  Hopefully the general levels of detritus blown around the street will decrease now too.

Also as the evenings are now lighter later my curtain twitching habit is surging again. It’s amazing how many little open backed vans trundle up and down our streets of an evening, peering into bin yards in the hope of a lovely abandoned fridge. With any luck the empty bin yards will stay that way and the trundling vans will fade away, rightly or wrongly I’ve assumed they’re scrap merchants looking for swag; sadly no rag and bone men any more.  Though I am almost certain I heard one calling out last year, he had a horse and everything when I had a look.

We’re also about to send out our first newsletter to the local community. It’ll update people on the future plans for demolition and refurbishment of the remaining properties, we’re also hoping to engage with more residents and encourage more attendance at the meetings and involvement in the area in general.

My task over the next few months, as well as finishing off a fairly large University assignment, is looking into the possibility of getting some funding to have wildflowers planted on the ground left after demolition. LCC can fund basic grassing of the areas which would be great, but we need to raise funds if residents would prefer a more aesthetic solution. There are other benefits to more diverse flora in an urban area too, such as encouraging wildlife back to urban areas and creating Bee Roads and there are potential sources of funding such as Plan Bee that I will be investigating.

LCC and Leeds Fed have done all the work so far to be fair, I’ve just set up a gmail account and searched for a non beer related head and shoulder shot of me to add as Chair of the group.  To say that I hate having my photo taken would be a huge understatement. I’m not the most photogenic person so it’s always a stressful experience looking at a picture of yourself and realising you don’t actually look like one of the cast of 90210 but as long as I don’t look like Ena Sharples I suppose it’s not too bad.

I’m also looking into a new community group meeting venue, our original venue has changed purpose (or got wise) so we can no longer use it and we have had to shift to a venue further away with no windows, so not overly conducive to comfortable discussion. I’ll wait to see what my enquiries bring.

Over the last month the sun has been shining which is very unusual for this time of year. Over the last two weeks in-between the sun shining the wind has also been blowing and the rain has been lashing down. Everything does looks better in the sun when it does shine and I suppose the rain has meant I haven’t had to water my tomato plants too much over the last 2 weeks.

My front yard is in a right state both my potted plants and the weeds are doing pretty well due to the aforementioned sun and rain. I’ve tackled the weeds with some nice chemicals and will try and tidy them up this weekend weather permitting; not one of nature’s gardeners me.  I also need to paint my front door, a task I have no idea how to start or even complete. I mean do you have to remove the door, or can you just clean and sand it in situ and hope for the best? And do I need special outdoor paint? I think that might wait until later in the summer.

Apparently you can often tell the privately owned properties in predominantly social or council owned housing estates by the state of their front doors. Privately owned houses are often in a worse state cosmetically, I’d certainly attest to that.

So I’ve mucked about with the Blog a bit too so if anyone is interested you can follow by email by entering your details in the little box provided and hopefully this means that you don’t have to set up a Google account if you don’t want to, though you may be added to a sinister database somewhere that could try to sell you Viagra and kidney transplants at a later date.

And that’s all the factual stuff for now so from Ena and me, hope you enjoyed reading and have a pint of stout on us (well we’re not paying, just buy it yourself).