I was pottering around the garden on Sunday morning, when I noticed a few broken branches on one of our wild olive trees, which we planted against our boundary wall a) in keeping with our Provencal style house and perhaps more importantly b) to eventually provide privacy between us and our rather unpleasant neighbours. How did I know they were unpleasant from the start you may well ask? Well, it wasn't just from the rough as bear's guts tone of their voices or the unpleasant manners of their children (obviously inherited) or the fact that they stood up at the first Homeowners meeting, having greeted us a neighbours, then publicly complaining about the colour of our window frames. (Granted it was a mistake, but public humiliation from Judas!) It was more specifically that they reneged on their promise to pay for their side of the boundary wall, which we even had plastered by our builder at their request. They were very tough times for us financially, so it hurt all the more watching tons of marble and travetine being carted into their palatial but garish Neo Gothic/mock Georgian/Tuscan monstrosity. You know the one when you pass it, painted that boring brown colour, which a kind friend placated me by telling me it was called "Sharkey" after it's owner (a cross between s**t and khaki) with it's oversized window sporting a sandblasted version of the Venus de Milo in the triple volume vestibule. Though it still burns, it truly does, even after ten years, and the wall continues to stand, despite "not being up to their building standards" I console myself that it is they who duck into the next aisle in the supermarket if they see me, or scrabble intently for their cellphones if we pass each other outside.
But then, I discovered to my horror, that all our wild olives had been inexpertly hacked. So even though there had been no discussion between us at all, nor any mention or even a cowardly note in our letterbox regarding our trees hanging over our wall (they actually grow pretty straight and tall which is why we considerately planted them) they took it upon themselves, late one Saturday, to get a ladder and hack off the branches and chuck them over our wall. And I mean OUR wall. I am shocked. I am outraged. I am aggrieved. I am angry. But I am not really all that surprized. What else could you expect from scumbags like that?
I feel as if an act of aggression has taken place and I want to shake a stick at them and lash out, if not shout out about their lack of courage, decency and lineage. I want to get a can of spray paint and vandalize the wall (my wall.) I want to pour weed poison on the plants on their verge when I walk past. I want to bludgeon their beastly little piece of canine excrement into a pulp should he ever rush at our Rex and go for this throat again. Fortunately our Rex slipped free from me the last time this happened and showed him, as a dog who'd grown up on the streets, who was boss, Big Time. I want to scatter broken shards of glass across their driveway and place piano wire strategically across their gateway. This is alarming to me, who wouldn't harm a fly nor scream at a flea. But where would it end? Me throwing things over their wall? Them throwing them back? Insults shouted in the street? Them throwing poisoned meat for Rex? Bad enough that I have to know that they exist in such close proximity to me, worse to get deeper into a petty war over the wall. No, that's their style, for want of a better word.
So no girls and guys, I am just going to have to bite the bullet, pay for the removal of the branches (there really aren't that many, it's the principle of the matter that irks me) and hope that a decent tree surgeon can doctor the trees I purchased as babies when I could ill afford them, to screen such ghastly vermin from my life.
And hope that they've made greater, meaner enemies than me who will lay the Rattex in my stead...
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