Anarchy in the Surrey hills.

We are in deep trouble with Anon.

Fame at last! Please note from the photograph above, scenes of anti-social anarchy and lights visible from space (under a swiftly erected tarp as it rained- summer in England after all)

We have just returned from our annual car migration from Italy to England, and because, I am too lazy to start The Great Wash or The Great Unpack or anything else with The Great in front of it (although I did drag myself to the gym for 28 minutes, any more and I’d have risked breaking out into a sweat), I was doom scrolling through our local Facebook page. And there, posted last August by the prolific writer Anonymous is the post-

‘Lost! Sense of neighbourhood, community and common sense. To the family in the large house with multicoloured garden lights that light up at least 6 gardens. Turned on at 9.30 pm when they crack open the wine and start loudly discussing terribly important matters. YOUR NEIGHBOURS HAVE TO WORK. Come on it’s a Monday night. A Tuesday night etc etc no wonder there’s so many houses for sale. TAKE IT indoors. PLEASE’

‘Large house?’ You can’t slide a credit card in this house, and we’ve already had to build a hanger in garden to cope with the overspill of our possessions. I am going to the gym to get thin so I can get into my clothes- and my house without getting bruises.

Lights on! Talking! Wine! AT NINE THIRTY ON A SUMMERS EVENING! ! We aren’t hoodlams. We are barely in the UK so this is extremely rare but (‘fessing up )- we both had 60^th birthdays last summer. At around midnight my batteries expire and the only noise coming from me is snuffling. Admittedly the boys may be up later and have deep voices but it’s not as if they are singing Swedish-Viking drinking songs. Well, not always.

It comes to something when a couple of sixty year olds chatting in the garden get a bollocking from Anon. I can only say that Anon is lucky that the portable hot tub is no more as we used to have to shout louder over the bubbles. And having consumed too much wine, I have on rare occasions been known to fling Gianni’s pants into the herbaceous border which has led to much kiss chase and shrieking. (Don’t tell the kids) Also, thinking about it, I am wondering if our Anon neighbours ears were twitching with anger on the night of epiphany when I serenaded our lovely apple tree by bashing drums and singing the wassailing carol to it. (see earlier Substack)

https://piawhitmartlet.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/154296842?referrer=%2Fpublish%2Fhome%3Futm_source%3Dsubstack

We have had problems with the neighbours before. Infact, I’m wondering if it’s the same neighbours.

A few decades ago, I kept hens, geese and indeed Indian runner ducks in our garden. It was idyllic- a pretty little hen house with a weather vane on top, black current bushes, raspberries, fowl dust bathing in happiness, the ducks running around everywhere chasing snails. The geese, Christmas and MidSummer, lived in a lovely old wooden dog kennel I’d painted, the ducks in the old log/bike shed, the chickens in the hen house. It was like a glossy spread in Country Living. We loved it. We used to hang off the edge of the hottub watching ‘Modern Family’ with my computer positioned on a chair just out of the splash zone. These are the treasured memories of when the kiddies were tiddly that I am mining for my kiddies picture books.

My morning routine was let the chooks out (getting an egg for my lunch), school run, back for a cup of tea, then start the day. One day, I found tiny red mites scurrying up my arm. I assumed that the feather cushions on the sofa were at fault so at enormous cost sent for the exterminator who steamed to death every soft furnishing and mattress within the house.

The very next day, that I realised that they were back - running up my arm from when I’d taken the eggs from the chicken coop. Close inspection confirmed the problem. I treated the chooks with the anti tick stuff you put on kittens (which worked remarkably well even though the vet said ‘no’ although someone had successfully use it on their parrot) BUT I knew there were red mites in the hen house.

So my au pair Stanni and I decided upon a solution. We pulled out the garden hose just in case, got two glasses and a bottle of chilled white from the fridge, sloshed some petrol around and set fire to the hen house (admittedly it had been a dry summer) thinking we might BBQ/lob some potatoes over the embers and sit around chatting rubbish until the fire/wine had completely died out. In other words behaving completely like responsible, albeit female, citizens.

To be fair the hen house went WOOF and did burn somewhat alarmingly fast and high but we had the hose and it was all under control at all times, if a little hot with flames sometimes dancing within the tree canopy.

The next second some hovel- dweller bloke (only a hovel dweller could think our house ‘large’) from the street that backs on our garden was yelling at us. He refused to accept we had it all under control. We ignored his protests which were largely downed out by the roar and crackle of the fire. Stanni and I muttered that it was all very sexist and had we been blokes with beers this interference wouldn’t have happened.

The shouting alarmed my son (aged about six) who ran inside and upstairs, flung open the bathroom window and started shouting ‘FIRE! FIRE ! WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE’ as if this was London in the summer of 1666 and we lived on Pudding Lane.

Shouting SHUSH IT’S FINE didn’t work but I couldn’t leave to comfort him/shut him up as we were guarding the fire which was in no danger of going out.

(The bathroom, and indeed the garden, have been scenes of the crime before. Once on a Christmas play-date one of the kiddies – not mine- disappeared to the bathroom. Presumably I had forced them to try a mince pie and unsure what to do with it, or perhaps having unsuccessfully attempted to gnaw it, the said child stuffed the mince pie down the bidet plug hole. They then turned the tap on and returned to the melee downstairs. Of course I was none the wiser and to be honest even if I had given it a moments though, the worst I would have expected would have been to find an unflushed log left in the loo. God knows what preservatives are in mince pies. The pastry didn’t dissolve at all but sealed the bidet plug and pipe shut. The bidet flooded the floor and the kitchen ceiling fell down.

Talking of disasters there was also the Halloween party when madness possessed me to hide chocolates and sweets etc in the garden for a treasure hunt. I armed toddlers with torches and off they tore into the blackness of the garden (complete with black (duck) pond for drowning in). No sooner did a beam of light alight on a shiny wrapper when all charged at the same spot. It was like skittles as they bashed into each other and fell down. I thought there was going to be a mass trip to A&E for concussion)

Anyway, back to the hen house fire.

The next second Stanni and I were still in the garden when in rolls a continent of fire officers (looking fabulous in their kit) and hoses etc with the lane outside full of flashing blue fire engines. We were all for cracking open another bottle of plonk to share with them and grabbing some glasses but they said ‘no’ and next second and the hen house inferno was being drenched by fire hoses.

At this point this a scruffy bloke that I don’t know from Adam sauntered into the garden.

‘Nothing to do with us’ said the fireman

‘Who are you?’ I asked

‘An interested by stander’ he said

‘Then bugger off’ I said escorting him down the side passage. Seriously a girls home is her castle.

So I think the finger of suspicion points at them.

Anyway, I’m saying Power to us sixty year olds. Let’s fight for the freedom to talk loudly, drink wine and have coloured lights on at 9.30pm on a summers night. I’ll even give up dry whatever month it is and fling Gianni’s under pants into the herbaceous border again for kiss-chase shriekery. If there’s a table I’m still up for dancing on it, I may even use the extra height to waggle body parts (or a digit in )the general direction of Anon. But I may need a hand getting up. Who’s with me?