Bonfire of the vanities

Since this photo, the fire’s gone out after consuming the fence and denuding  finally gone out after consuming the adjacent fence and half of the overhanging tree. In the scale of things, gratitude is now in order

My next-door neighbour, bottom left in the pic, had complained to the Council about the state of his neighbours’ backyards with their ever-growing heaps of discarded carpets, fridges, furniture and refuse bags, flung out to decay as best they may; consequence of the landlord letting out rooms to migrant workers. It wasn’t a complaint about aesthetics, but rats’ nests. I’ve found tunnels near my own fence. I don’t care to check further, to see if they are rat-highways, or perhaps entrances to nurseries full of cute babies, pink and blind.

The council slapped a fine on the landlords concerned: £1000 each if the rubbish was not cleared within 7 days. Money talks. The proper thing would have been to scoop up the garbage and have it taken to the recycling centre, a mile out of town. I don’t suppose they got where they are today by doing the proper thing. So we closed all our windows. The smoke crept in somehow, even when we used the bathroom and kitchen fans to try and extract it. After 24 hours everything that could burn, had. Our brief sample of air quality Beijing-style had ended.

A pile of ash and bed-springs remains as a testament. After all the rain lately it was dry, and I pottered in my own backyard in the twilight, replanting spring bulbs, stripping out the spent annuals to put them in our new compost bin, delivered by the Council at the discount price of £8.

It’s a year since I moved into this house, and a year since I left full-time working. The events I described in my last have put an abrupt and slightly humiliating end to my professional career, but it’s nice to have that cleared up neatly. The abruptness was due to male ego—I wanted to prove I could do something—and so was the humiliation, when I realized I probably couldn’t do it, causing a crisis by my resignation from the audit. And this ego is built-in: the constant need for self-respect. Till now, I had various strings to my bow. One of them has just snapped. When the last one snaps—the ability to draw breath—off we go to something or nothing.

Till then, I’ll happily potter in a twilight garden while it’s free of toxic smoke. Literally or otherwise.

PS, 13th July, 2013: Five years later, the rubbish in that same backyard had accumulated to an average height of four feet and, in the absence of an effective fence, overflowed into the next-door yard. Complaints and diplomatic threats were issued, resulting in a recent clearance. At the cost of a few nails, they have erected a makeshift fence out of left-over rubbish. The fridge is still there.

Come moth and rust! Do your job and corrupt. There’s no hope that thieves will break through and steal this trash.