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When it turned up in the local newspaper, I recognised the alley as one of my regular cut-throughs on runs in the neighbourhood.  Later that same day it turned up on the BBC nightly News so the next morning I decided to go back for my own document of the boondoggle.

Double yellow lines limit parking from the center of the street to the kerb (curb) on the side of the street they are painted; you can stop to load/unload but otherwise the space must be left clear for emergency vehicles.  So, when a fire engine needs to get through the area above…see what everyone is on about?

My own photo really adds nothing to the debate and only serves to show that I need a few more sit-ups and lot less alcohol on a weekly basis (the gut alone would block an ambulance’s passage).  Here’s the same photo with two vehicles illegally parked, scaled to the alleyway’s dimensions:

Everyone wants a picture of this alley, now.  While there setting up my own camera two different citizens with SLRs popped up at the wide end and another at the narrow bit.  I posed with my arms partly stretched to the walls for one of the photographers.

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While not a big fan of comic books*, I have really enjoyed the TV version of The Walking Dead although most of the pleasure comes from its setting (and location shooting) in the hinterlands where I spent the bulk of my youth between Griffin, Newnan, and Atlanta, Georgia. I can assure you that there have always been savage, unthinking monsters threatening the safety of the general public there and the depictions are as much horror show as they are like a family reunion. Very pleasant except for the occasional moments of terror.

So, the publication of Black Charity, a “graphic novel” [comic book] set in Swindon (my new home town) is greeted with some measure of excitement. I haven’t read it, but probably shall do. Thumbing through to find the drawings of dungeon scenes at the dominatrix’ flat some local landmarks featured in this blog have sprung to light including my local just down the Western Street hill, the Beehive, and another pub over in Wanborough, the Harrow.

Black Charity by Bal Speer, an art lecturer at the local college, is available at your local book store (don’t give those fuckers at Amazon any money).

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*As a kid, I tried to read comics but couldn’t really buy the story lines and generally stuck with the satirical periodicals. Mad Magazine got me through my early years although I had to have most of the superhero references explained to me. As I grew, I moved on to National Lampoon and then, in my teens made the leap to adult satire by reading the New York Times. Now I get most of my news and humour from the fortnightly delivery of Private Eye.

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During coffee and the Sunday paper, the sun appeared (don’t worry, it is still castratingly cold) and one of the urban foxes in the buurt found a sliver of daylight in our back garden.

 

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[Originally, this project was described here,  and you can see the most recent prior Update (2) here.]

24 Feb 2013, Guilt Run: Spent the day straightening up the basement which, more than it should have, entailed drinking whisky until it was gone and then eating pizza washed down with copious quantities of wine.  As penance, I covered another bit of the map; much of it was through very modern and/or wealthy neighbourhoods without character but found what appears to be an old pub or hotel (from the ceramic plaque/tile on the former corner door) with a George V era post box out front.  Also, there is a laundrette which will come in handy when the upholstery becomes too soiled to bear:

 

28 February 2013 Nothing really planned on this run except to knock out some of the alleyways on my warm-up jog to the gym.  And, not that much achieved, either:

  

Followed it up with a walk to and then on from the Glue Pot (cider steels my nerves for a walk past the Bumming Park).  Jackie was working till 9 so I made the trip to walk her home:

  

02 March 2013 We left early to check out this used furniture store that is going out of business only to find they are only open Tuesday, Wednesday, and usually Saturday (but not today).  With extra time we went in search of graffiti and found some decent murals and a park with an area once dedicated to wall art (now just covered in tags):

 

07 March 2013: My body temperature tends to be a bit low (35.8-36°C) and I never really concern myself too much when it comes up to human normal of 37°C.  Monday, I was aching all over from what I thought was overdoing the Sunday run; around 8pm I started shivering violently and took to bed with 39.5°C (103.1°F).  It has been hovering in the 38-39°C range ever since but spiked again yesterday at work…this is a bit of the path I took home after stopping in Boots the Chemist for decongestants and analgesics:

Graffito where the alleyway crosses the south end of Stanier Street

13 March 2013: After a week of illness the infection has abated a bit and moved down to my lungs so I decided to try the cold air cure on it.

 

It feels good to be back at it…maybe the next update will cover a much bigger portion of the remaining trails.

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I don’t even know if this place is still in business, but the Google Street View really recommends it:

And, check out the unit on this guy…talk about your large kebab.  With a package like that, who needs sit-ups (or soap)?

[The 50 Burger Challenge, which prompted this ever widening search for kebab shops, is going well though with a bit more enthusiasm among the participants than the beer challenge had last year.  It is a good site to fulfill all your burger porn desires...check it out here.]

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[Originally, this project was described here,  and you can see the most recent prior Update (1) here.]

I’m glad I extended the natural bounds of Old Town to include everything the estate agents like to market thus, if for no other reason than the legitimate bounds are so small and this gives me a bit more connectivity to the greater region.  However, I did choose some butt-ugly territory when I was drawing the initial border.  Oh, well…shall we carry on?

 

It was cold but calm and clear and birds were singing–more spring than winter–so I didn’t linger over the coffee and Sunday Observer too long and got out into the fresh air.  The Radnor Street Cemetery has an entrance on my side of Eastcott and since it serves both as a formal Victorian burial ground AND as a nature preserve it is always a nice crossing but especially in the mid-winter morning light.  Photos of the RSC next time (or, there are very nice ones at Swindon in the Past Lane), but I was keen to clear some of the bounds from the map today and continued on to the rail bridge that divides north and south Swindon then around to the rail trail that used to connect Old Town Station (and then Marlborough to Salisbury) with Swindon.  The final few turns were just ‘zenning’ the trail and I found a quick connection to Bath Road from the house via King William Street (at Eastcott Hill near the Moose Lodge).

Though still winter, the days are getting longer at a noticeable clip and I slipped into my sweats while on the bus and ran from the tented market up Commercial Street with the sun setting behind me.  I stopped by the house to drop off my backpack and continued out to the Town Gardens which I found was already closed (winter hours).

  

At the end of Quarry there’s an alleyway with a great mural on it but the alleyway is barely wide enough for two people to squeeze past one another and the mural is mostly dark colours so I couldn’t manage a decent picture of it on this trip, but there were loads of decent graffiti around including this shiny bit under the Devizes Road bridge over the rail trail next to where I discarded yet another race/hash shirt combo:

The climb up Mill Road/Westlecot was steeper than I was really prepared for and I took it a bit fast.  Reaching The Mall, I opted for the flat route past the Commonweal School then a few alleyways and South Street (where one of the Victorian cottages at the Prospect Hill end has a cool bit of signage out back):

Although not a run because I was laden with 6 bottles of wine (from Tesco, not the now-residential Eastcott Hill Wine Store) and other groceries, I explored a bit of the alleyway archipelago.

  

The route was meant to (and did) take me past the Swindon Cycle Working Men’s Club which is still CIU affiliated but not so much a men’s club or having anything to do with cycling.  I read they are looking for new members and as I have moved away from Ferndale WMC (and let my membership lapse and I think it has shut down anyway) and it is pretty close to the house.  On the way I spotted this wall in an alleyway (nice the way the door is surrounded by the art) and these neat roof ornaments on Dryden:

Hopped off the bus just after the Magic Roundabout and did a bit of a neat neighbourhood I’ve never explored before and finally entered the mapping zone at the Queen’s Park which is sort of a gigantic arboretum and really holds some promise for spring and summer visits:

  

On exiting, I realised where I was when I spotted the back of the Jewel in the Crown, but the Holy Rood School was a bit of a surprise.

The Friday run this week took in a bit of Marlborough Road corridor including the area around Intel, the Marriott, a giant wooded park to the south, and the Croft Sport Centre.  I also spotted these two houses…the one on the left was the one we were driving out to see if we wanted to rent it just over two years ago but were crashed into by a large Mercedes van.  The one on the right was the first one we inspected for this most recent move but the stairwell was too narrow for any of the shit we would have wanted to put upstairs (and the landlord would accept the kitty as a cohabitant).

  

More next week….

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The formal jogging exploration of Old Town began with a quick trip to Tesco (outside the stated bounds but I don’t really colour within the lines).  Returning with some mulligatawny and a bottle of wine I avoided the rude pedestrian walkway of Regent Street and did a little of Eastcott Hill turning across from the Sea of Green hydroponics shop:

The next evening was warmer than it has been in weeks and the twilight lingered in the nearly cloudless skies and I took the opportunity to enjoy the hilly terrain, going first down Dover Street to the footpath that comes out across from Savernake then up to the alley behind the houses parallel to the roadway.  A couple beat me to the little stair case to the upper ground and westward so I continued on to Bath Road and down Okus to the long staircase down to lower Kingshill.  I looped Bowood once to tick it off the list then followed an alley I thought would end after a block but went on all the way (with some road crossings) to the Running Horse.  Moreover, it linked to many more alleys, an archipelago to rival Tucson’s.

        

Back up the Kingshill and via some more pedestrian cut-throughs and I found myself face-to-face with the Clifton and then on the way back by the house crossed paths with the Globe and the Castle…I’ve never run past so many good pubs without stopping, or at least not in a long time.  Then, it was back down Prospect Hill to Crombey Street and across the ‘bumming park’  to walk Jackie home from work over some now-ticked-off-the-list territory. {Oh, Jackie’s co-workers refer to it as the Bumming Park because sometime in the annals *snicker* of history it was a cruising zone.}

   

Next, I entered the map zone at the end of a run from the edge of South Marston on my way to pic up some stuff for supper at the Cooperative.  Pushing the last bit of the hill to Christ Church I was going to finish in the Lawns Park but found the cemetery gate locked and decided I was already done.  The poignancy of the grave of a ten-year, above, in a little copse with ornaments hung from the trees around it caught my attention and I figured it would have been something I remembered recently from the newspaper; no, this fresh patch was covered in July 2010.

The cemetery is a good one, if you are into these (I love ‘em).  One odd feature is the large flower bedding area stuck full of metal funeral markers I saw as I exited to cool off in the park before the grocery trek.

   

A brief jog into Gorse Hill and back left me hungry for a good kebab, but I guess I should have stopped at the kebab van stood in the Wickes car park because everyone in Old Town opens after 3 pm.  The mappable bits picked up near the Coop, again, but the Old Town Kebab was my first locked door followed soon after by King’s Best BBQ down Victoria Road, but I had some other errands to do and figured I could wait it out…

  

However, the wait was fruitless as I arrived back at King’s at 3:15 to find it still locked and dark and uninhabited.  Shit, they are the oldest kebabery in town and have a fantastic reputation for quality and cleanliness (and I was feeling lazy and didn’t fancy a walk back into Old Town proper).  Testing some alleyways along the way I loaded up at the Old Town Kebab House and did a little strolling dining through bits of the park before heading home:

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New project for late winter and early spring: learn a bit about my new neighbourhood by running every inch of it.  The map, above, is a liberal description of the bounds of Old Town; a more accurate one would only include the region from Christ Church to the Locarno to the site of the old rail station to the Town Gardens to Prospect Place and closing the path but this larger area is what the estate agents list areas as when they want them to sound hip or charming.  Besides, I could do Old Town proper in an hour or two.

I’ve already covered most of the paths available, but this will force me to systematically explore alternate paths and alternate connections whilst getting a better feel for the new territories.

[Added 22 February: To clarify the map markings...they usually are part of a longer run or hike, but each new marking will only go from the start of the first new 'mappable' path to the end of the last new bit.  In this way, I hope to minimise the number of overlapping lines.]

Update 1, 13-16 February 2013

Update 2, 17-23 February 2013

Update 3, 24 February – 13 March 2013

Update 4, 14-29 March 2013

Update 5, 30 March – 23 April 2013

 

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“Yeah, still doing the move.” [Pause] “Western Street in Old Town. Mental.”    — one of our movers on his cellphone to a mate

Western is narrow and steep and after 8-10 inches of snow accumulation it is only good for recreation but the movers didn’t want to cancel the job and so at 8 am their truck arrived on Ferndale and they started shifting our shit to the new digs.

 

Most of the stuff was packed into these cube shaped boxes, 36cm on a side, that are marked with the hazard classes of all varieties of chemicals that were originally shipped in them. They are sturdy for their intended purpose, so we tend to load them as full as possible: they are the precise size of record albums so half a shelf of vinyl will pack in, and you can easily fit 75 pounds of books into one.

As the boxes are all more-or-less identical we were careful to mark them so it would be easy to find the bits we needed as we slowly unpack. So, in which of the 10 boxes marked “KITCHEN” or “KITCHEN SHITE” should I look for the plates, wine glasses, pizza wheel? Dinner was served on alternative place settings.

The cat was a trooper, for the most part (which is surprising because he is afraid of EVERYTHING except being flung 10-12 feet through the air onto a mattress or exercise pad which he absolutely adores). It is about 1.5 miles to walk from the old to the new place, and he hates the cat carrier but once off Ferndale, a very busy street, and into the snow-covered park nearby and then the Oasis bike lanes he seemed mesmerized by the scenery and calmed down a bit. Even on the walk up the crowded, pedestrianized shopping lane of Regent’s Street he seemed to be looking around more so than his usual cowering from strangers (although he may have been imploring the passers-by to save him from this mad man who was carrying him, in a cage, through this bedlam.

Once at the house, though, he had a few sniffs of stuff he should recognize then hid under the couch until I sorted the boxes into their various rooms. He came over and curled on my chest as I lay on the floor at one point (in pain from the days exertions), and then once the bed was reconstructed he found a pillow that smelled familiar and crawled under the blanket there.

The neighbourhood seems friendly so far, with fewer yobs and more young folk that appear to be starting families (the kids we’ve spotted are too young to yob it up yet). The walk to Jackie’s work is pleasant and the street is dead silent (as are most of the narrow, one-way lanes in the buurt). I think this is going to work out just fine.

A bottle of Cava cooled nicely here but we’ll give it a day or two before we take the coffee and newspaper out for some fresh air

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So, four years now (or, rather, next week it will be…here’s the annual reports for years Three, Two, and One for historical perspective).

We just received our new visas valid until 2016 but plan to take the next step toward citizenship in a year, Indefinite Leave to Remain…sort of the British Green Card.  There is an exam, first, but in general it is all downhill from here.

The view from Western Street near the new house…also all downhill

Additionally, we are in the process of moving house (which is why I rushed the annual report a week forward) from just north of the Oasis over to Old Town to a house situated close walks to either the Beehive or the Castle or the Globe (recently reopened!)—three locals instead of one and all three of high quality—and dozens of others a short walk. The new house has three bedrooms each larger than its counterpart in the old house, the two receptions are larger and made into more of an open-plan configuration, the bath is larger and has a tub (not just a shower), and there is a finished basement; on the down side, the kitchen is a little narrower and more primitive as is the small garden but everything we do and everywhere we normally go in Swindon (save for the butcher) is so close.

The only races I did this past year were the London Marathon (5 pubs plus a can of Carling on the last mile) and the Beerathon (5 miles with a pint and a hefty food item between each) and the mileage run for the year suffered from this lack of focus—1950 give or take about 25 (most estimates pretty good using gmap-pedometer), while the last several years (except for the year of the wreck) were in the 2200-2500 range.

On the runs, I visited  255 new pubs with a stunning 67 new ones (steep part of the graph) in September when I took two weeks off work and ran at least 10 miles per day in new territory each day. The 1000th wasn’t as big a thrill as I thought it would be, but I saw some really nice places and met some really fine folk. The September holiday found me visiting Gloucester, South Wales, Slough (exotic, I know) and Exeter along with some nearer-to-Swindon trips. The 100 Yellow Beer Challenge was responsible for a lot of second visits to pubs I might not otherwise have gone to after an initial stop and many of these seemed better the second time around. Oh, and my Workingman’s Club appears to have failed or at least hasn’t been open the last several times I’ve popped by (I have a grand one scoped out for the new neighbourhood, though).

Best pubs in Year Four (reverse order by First Visit write-up):
The Southgate Inn, Devizes
Byron’s, Swindon
The Hop Inn, Swindon
Dicey Reilly’s, Teignmouth
The Brass Monkey, Teignmouth
One Eyed Jack’s, Gloucester
Ye Olde Red Lion, Tredegar
The Rose of Denmark, Woolwich
The Volunteer Rifleman’s Arms
The Green Dragon, Marlborough
The British Lion, Devizes
The Blue Boar, Alsbourne (for the Dr. Who connections)

Favourite write-ups:
Postboxes
British Citizenship Exam Prep
Risk Assessment-Bins
Oxford Tourists
Assize Court, Bristol

Cock Flavour
Paul Simon in Hyde Park
Edie’s Lawn
The hunt
The Bremen Musicians (German children’s story)
Sex Tourism in Wiltshire
Modern Algebra for Omid
Burns’ Day Lunch

There are others search for ‘made me laugh.’  The blog may or may not have made some of the over 100,000 visitors laugh, but the damn fools keep checking in (that’s you, that is).

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I love having a decent butcher.  In Cambridgeshire, the one we used was ten miles away in Cottenham but worth the trip for our weekly shop.  They regularly had wild game (pheasants, rabbits, pigeons, grouse) and could get you anything you imagined you might fancy.  We finally used some 19th and early 20th century cookbooks we have been carrying around lo these last 3 decades and it really lent some atmosphere to our Sunday dinners in our 18th century farmhouse.

The butchers in Bicester were not so great and the ones in Oxford close too early for frequent visits.  When we moved to Swindon, though, we found a peach of a butcher shop run by Bryan and Kay.  They know their regular customers by name and interests, keep abreast of cooking trends so as to dole out tips and suggestions, and they are just fabulous folk.

They started taking orders for the Christmas larders a week ago.  I don’t know everything we are going to get, but there will be cheese, cassoulet fixings (garlic sausages, duck, lamb), a bird of some sort for Xmas.  We missed out on the order last year and made do with what I could scrounge at a supermarket (wasn’t too bad, but not what I wanted).  This year, I will not make that mistake.

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I was duped.  It seemed like a nice concept, a bit of pride in our little town; but, do you know, the place was CRAWLING with homosexuals!  Same thing happened last year.

Okay, seriously, I know we are a town, but a large town; and I know this is the 5th year of the event and it is still gathering steam, but let me tell you honestly that two drag queens and a rainbow flag do not a Parade make:

The Mailcoach (great gay bar name, by the way) sent a Grayson Perry queen (Jackie says it is supposed to be Marilyn Monroe).

The Pink Rooms, essentially the Only Gay [Nightclub] In The Village, managed a motorized carrier for its drag contribution.

Swindon is pretty cool about most things and folks just turn up, not because they care one-way-or-another about what cause is being touted but because there is something going on in the park.  ”There’s beer and fried food,” is about the only prerequisite and I’ve never been the fittest fellow in sight at, for instance, Atlanta or Amsterdam Gay Day events–but here, I am a buff god.

Loads of families show up–there’s a bouncy castle.  And, speaking of bouncy castle, here’s a little something to prove that some fetishists are catered to at the grounds:

The entertainment is usually pretty good and only about half of it hits you over the head (or waves a figurative cock or minge in your face) with gay-ness largely because more than half the acts are just there to perform and many probably can’t be painted with the broad brush of LGBT (are those all the letters?).  Especially powerful in the rock category, Joan of Arc ruled and only did one Joan Jett cover (and the lead singer did a fantastic Axl Rose impression at one point):

I guess the best line of the day came from Trixie CumMore (the drag act at the top of this article).  She pointed at some girls and asked where they were from.

“Pen Ill!” they drunkenly yelled back, then raised their plastic cups up in the air, “Woooooo!”
“Penhill,” chuckled miss CumMore, then gesturing back at the stage, “Don’t be afraid, darlings. This is ‘e-lec-TRI-city.’ No top-up meters for my show.”
Awesome.

Finally, there’s freebies out there waiting to be posted to anyone with a UK postcode.  Get them:

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The answer to the question, "What's the nicest thing your neighbours ever dumped into their front garden?"

I do miss the gnome, face down on their kitchen roof. But, since the neighbours suddenly left at the end of July we have been holding off on celebrating (links to past descriptions of their behaviour can be found here).  As one of my work colleagues put it, “it’s bleak up North, and it sounds like it just got bleaker.”

They sent one of the incompetent offspring (or, at least another relative) over every so often the last month and a half to gather items which, late at night, someone else occasionally would come over and load into a vehicle.

The ducks were let out of their box every few days and visits from the RSPCA never seemed to come to anything.

But they are gone now.  Torturing new neighbours in another jurisdiction.  I have rarely been happier with someone else’s innocent misfortune.

We can probably turn off the surveillance cameras, now.

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The Town Gardens is my favourite park in Swindon and it gets used frequently for festivals.  This weekend it hosted the Swindon Mela, billed as a celebration of all things asian.  This was an awful lot of fun although far too crowded for my taste;  still, if moved to a larger park it might lose a bit of the cosmopolitan flavour that the Town Gardens offer.  Also, the Garden is at the highest point in town and that lends a bit of an air all by itself.

By asian, the Brits almost always mean Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, and Bangladeshi but it was nice to see such a wide variety represented (although Indian geographically, there is a substantial Goan population in town that has a vibrant culture and a unique identity, for instance).  I didn’t note a lot of Iranian or, looking further east, Thai stalls but the crowd made it hard to get close to any of the information booths or vendors.  There was a little segregation to note:

The ethnically English among the crowd (and a lot of us other pale folk) found the most culturally familiar fare at the Cobra Lager stand.  Bitter and strong (like me!), it was refreshing after the climb to Old Town on this warmest day of the season.

The Bollywood actor Jeet worked the crowd not from the stage but face to face. He even came back onto stage and performed more (again, right at the railings to the delight of the mostly female fans) when the much more aloof and (it seemed to me) self-important Silinder was fashionably late. After his extra gigs, Jeet came strolling through the crowd with his offspring, shaking hands and chatting amiably with anyone who came along.

With Jeet away (there’s a dirty joke in there somewhere), the stage filled with a female dance troupe and the crowd up front quickly exchanged young women for a bunch of dudes.

The overall crowd mix remained about 60% caucasian British, 40% Asian, with 2 or 3 Caribbeans and a couple of Americans.  Advice for next year’s visit: arrive early and stake out a good place near the Bowl after getting some food and beer (the queues are enormous after about 1 pm).

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I think they are gone.  No shit, all indications are that they have moved away.  With the apparent retreat of the forces of darkness, the Siege of Swindongrad may be over.  I am still cautious but here were a series of emails and then my eyewitness observations of the halfwits:

from    xxxxx.xxxxx@ymail.com
to    xxxxxx@gmail.com
date    Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 1:36 PM
subject    trash

Hey

Don’t get too excited but Fat Boy and The Kid are here in a big rental van from Selby in North Yorkshire. No sign of the caravan or any of their other cars. Pray.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

from     xxxxxx@gmail.com
to    xxxxx.xxxxx@ymail.com
date    Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 2:11 PM
subject    Re: trash

Offer them a hand.  the Sooner they fuck off the better.

Actually, try not to think about it…you might jinx it.

bun

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

from    xxxxx.xxxxx@ymail.com
to    xxxxxx@gmail.com
date    Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 2:29 PM
subject    Re: trash

They are loading the truck. Appliances and odds and ends, some boxes so far. Will keep you posted. Keep praying.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

from    xxxxx.xxxxx@ymail.com
to    xxxxxx@gmail.com
date    Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 3:36 PM

Looks official. Living room furniture gone and tons and tons of boxes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

from    xxxxxx@gmail.com
to    xxxxx.xxxxx@ymail.com
date    Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 3:40 PM
subject    Re: trash

I’m not buying the champagne, yet…. Yet.  What’s the Wine Warehouse delivery time policy, just in case?
bun

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

from    xxxxx.xxxxx@ymail.com
to    xxxxxx@gmail.com
date    Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 4:11 PM
subject    Re: trash

It’s official, baby, whoa-ho! The boxes just  keep coming and now they are carrying out individual odds and ends.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As I approached the houses from the west I could see the van getting loaded with a bulky item which turned out to be a tanning bed.  If anything says ‘white trash,’ it would be a tanning bed but as I entered our house I was directed to the back window where a hose continuously drained water.  At first we thought it might be an aquarium, but it was still flowing hours later.  This seemed to indicate either a water bed or, far more likely, a hydroponics system; this would also serve to answer why these pale folk have a tanning bed: this is a perfect excuse for high electrical usage if noticed by the power company or a police heat camera (we get an unusual number of helicopter flyovers for a UK town).

Anyway, the House Harpy has reported on her social networking site that she is from Yorkshire and the day after ‘the incident’ (see link to Part 5, below) a couple of older folk came and had a civilised chat in the garden; we reckon these are her unfortunate and almost certainly disappointed parents.

It seems strange that they would move house so suddenly or, indeed, so surreptitiously: with each load one of the feral offspring packed into the truck they would emerge nervously and scope out the traffic on the street.  There were many parking spaces available (and them parking on the pedestrian right-of-way has never been a problem for them before) yet they chose to park their own vehicle down an alleyway.  Moreover, they own this house…that’s the strangest bit of all: they are abandoning an abode they have at least £58K (housing search turned up the last sale date and price) tied up in.

It is the general opinion up and down the street that this lot has been perpetrating benefits theft (welfare fraud for you Americans) on a grand scale.  Lately they have also pissed off a lot of their neighbours (actual citizens in addition to us foreigners) and the general word has been that something had to be done.

A judgement against them to repay several years of incapacity benefits and the 10′s of thousands of pounds per year skimmed for their Motability Scheme vehicles, Council Tax Waivers, and other expensive scams would make sense of this recent behaviour.  I surely hope that is what happened…it would go along nicely with Fat Boy’s loudly proclaimed taunts in no general direction at 3:30 am a few nights ago of, “If they think I’m going to take this they better fucking think again.  They don’t know who their fucking with.”

If “they,” whomever “they” may be, would like to find Fat Boy and his hive there should be some sort of records held by the Collier’s Car, Van and Truck Hire in Selby, North Yorks.  They let him drive off in a truck with registration plates GK52 TFY (first letter a little obscured) on 26th July 2011.

I awoke to birdsong this morning.

Earlier adventures available here, but there will be more:

24 April 2011–Part 1, The Pool, rotting laundry, mangy cats, and other initial thoughts on dignity

19 June 2011–Part 2, ‘Trash’ is to ‘White Trash’ as ‘Common’ is to ‘Dead Common’…Discuss

21 June 2011–Part 3, Pallet Shack?

17 July 2011–Part 4, Six Months Remain On Our Tenancy Agreement

21 July 2011–Part 5, Wiltshire Constabulary involvement

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Two nights ago, the circus next door spilled out onto the streets with some yelling and screaming followed by a visit from one cop who hauled away a girl when another cop showed up and went into chat with the neighbours for an hour and a half…we poured a couple of drinks and, like many of the other neighbours, took up observation posts in hope-against-hope that the paddy wagon would show up. It didn’t but another cooper did and started interviewing neighbours a few doors down from us. Before he could get as far as our joint, an emergency call came in and he and two other cop vehicles posted at either end of our street rolled off with sirens going. Shit, missed opportunity.

Last night, though, our viewing of a documentary about a teenage drag queen in some lead mining town in County Durham (I love BBC 3) was interrupted and a better opportunity for temporarily relocating one or more of the next door neighbours emerged. We gave it a few minutes to make sure this was going to be a big blow-up, but it seemed to have staying power. The coppers must have been too busy to answer the multiple calls from up and down the street this time so I sent them a note (expurgated here of identifying details as per the vagaries of libel law, here):

Earlier adventures available here, but there will be more:

24 April 2011–Part 1

19 June 2011–Part 2

21 June 2011–Part 3

17 July 2011–Part 4

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It has been awhile since the last update, so here is what the best neighbours in Swindon have been up to.

Pet lovers that they are, they have given a home to some ducks to accompany their 8 or 9 cats. They actually swam about in the pool with them from time-to-time, completely oblivious to the connection between the quality of the water and the, erm, nutrition duck shit might supply. The algal growth (and, I do reckon, bacterial growth) has been greatly accelerated and since they neither filter nor use disinfectant they were draining the pool completely every two days. On welfare, apparently, you don’t have to worry about your water bill (although I still wouldn’t be surprised to find unusual water usage on my bill for the summer).

Yes, welfare. They call it benefits here but it is the same and the people who abuse the system are the same. A couple of months ago some new crutches appeared propped up out in the front garden unused until the day Fat Boy had to go get his certification that he needed them to get around and thus wouldn’t be able to work and needed supplemental income to support a minimal amount of dignity (note that he carried the crutches to the car that day). Here he is exhibiting some of that minimally dignified existence while the duck shit pond refilled:

The caravan has recently been shifted back a couple of meters to allow for nightly bonfires. It appears that they harvest junked furniture from skips to fuel these blazes and the smoke from the particle board resins and plastic veneers can be thick and pungent. There seem to be no laws against this sort of behaviour even in a heavily populated area.

The pool came down Friday night sometime as did the trampoline which only seemed to be used by Fat Boy and the daughter. They had this sweet game where she would plead for him to stop hitting her and he would laugh and whistle and tell her to stop being such a baby while he smacked her feet with a cricket bat. The fun has moved back indoors, I guess, but you can still hear him loudly berate her a few times a week along with her screams and pleas. Charming though it is, Constabulary and Council seem disinterested in anything these people do.

Previous reports here:

24 April 2011–Part 1

19 June 2011–Part 2

21 June 2011–Part 3

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You know it's good when the first words you hear upon arrival home are, "you're not going to believe this...come on, let me show you."

Perhaps it is a housing for the inevitable hot tub boiler.  A meth lab would not surprise me, either.  Here’s the latest installation in the performance art that goes on, free of charge so far, right next door. And there are still enough pallet pieces left to fire the boiler, or throw out into the alley, the street, my garden, the possiblilities are endless.

Let me reiterate…these folks are NOT typical of Swindon.  Every town the world over is likely to have this sort; and if they do, we will probably move into the adjacent house.  Previous reports here:

24 April 2011–Part 1

19 June 2011–Part 2

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Following up on the April 2011 report, I give you our neighbours in June.

There were brief periods of sunshine this past Saturday and Wednesday was nice, but the laundry next door has been hanging out since Monday in the intermittent showers and torrents that plagued us most of last week.  Gumption is not a word I wood associate with them next door.

They drained the algal broth before last weekend but only to about 4 inches deep, then stuck a hose in it and refilled overnight (it was overflowing when I went to bed Friday night, 10th June), but they forgot to remove the syphon.  By the afternoon of the next day it was drained down to the residue that can be seen now a week hence (above).  I’m keeping a close eye on our water bill in the event they have found a way to tap into our plumbing.  I’m certain some of the other flood victims two or three doors down either side of these fools will back me up that it was not my excess.

The big stacks of pallets that were scattered about the back third of the garden have since April been broken into pieces and stuffed between the alley wall and the caravan, resulting in collapse of the wall in May.  Since then, the oldest boy that may or may not live there (it is really hard to tell) has been, on occasion, spending hours at a time hammering bits of them back together.  Of course, this project–if I may be so bold as to call it that–gets abandoned at the drop of a hat (or, perhaps the clink of an ice cube) and the remains left in place.  For weeks at a stretch.

Weekly recycling for two

The fat fuck of a father figure doesn’t work, unless you consider child abuse labour.  You always know when he is home because he whistles constantly and quite loudly.  And, I do mean constantly.  At 3 or 4 in the morning, immediately after berating his 15 year old daughter in the most foul of language (so immediately that one wonders when he took a breath), in the midst of what passes for quiet conversation over there–usually during someone else’s screamed response to one of his screamed comments.  The whistling, often to or at least concurrent with the strains of the sort of urban music that contains “Mariah Carey-esque unnecessary extra syllables,” is lately punctuated with–I shit you not–the phrase “YEEHAW!”

Oh, well, the lease won’t last forever.  I shall continue to take my runs to Old Town where I hope to move when the rental agreement does, mercifully, expire.

Any day now, I expect the hot tub installation

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I do love Swindon, my new town, but my neighbours leave a bit to be desired.  Not all of them, mind you; the old woman next to us is a hoot, and the young families beyond her are quite nice.  Two doors down in the other direction has just been sold or let and the new folks seem to be making progress with their garden and the folks we’ve met around us (across the street and across the alleyway) all seem fine, respectable folk.

9 April 2011 a couple days after the pool arrived (gnome on roof has always been there)

Then there is the next door neighbours. “Trash doesn’t get any whiter than this,” is a quote I’ve long attributed to a friend and bartender from Tucson but I’ve seen earlier attributions as well…none, however, could possibly been referring to a more deserving group of miscreants.

22 April 2011, algae; grandkids (or very young kids, anyways) have been on the trampoline unsupervised and eyeing the slime suspiciously

I’ve had massive, loud run-ins with this bunch of hillbillies triggered by asking if they could turn down their music just a little.  At the time, we had moved to the furthest part of our own garden and still couldn’t even hear our own speakers mounted not 3 feet from our own faces.  It is bad enough that their taste, as it were, in music is so bad–not just small-town gay bar R&B (y’know, that sort of music that bad drag queens love to belt out) really low-class small-town gay bar R&B.  But, then they have to get in our face about it (and, as it developed, some of our other neighbours’ faces as well) and try to make out that WE’RE the ones that are being so rude.  Turds.

So the photographs of their garden will appear from time-to-time as they do here.  The father figure (we’re not really sure how many live there) is on the dole and all sorts of disability benefits that he may or may not actually deserve.  People pull up on the pavement (sidewalk) and after the briefest of visits leave stuffing something into their pockets.  The SUV in the garden is NOT attached to that camper…the camper is BACKED into the exit of the yard and they move this vehicle around only in the back (makes you wonder if their hiding this expensive bit of property from prying investigators of one sort or another).  The pool appeared a few weeks ago, and was filled to about a foot deep then abandoned.  Oh, and they have at least 8 cats (so we have a wide variety of shit in our garden).

Contrary to appearances, the SUV is locked into this back garden area...it would require pulling out the camper to extricate the vehicle...they drove it around in the garden before the pool arrived

My neighbours in Tucson were problematic (there were the prostitutes for awhile, then the Okies that had all the broken down vehicles, empty beer vessels, and standing water). That was a nuisance.  In Buggville (our neighbourhood just over the Madison County line when we worked in Athens, GA) everyone was a mental patient or a crackhead.  I really had hoped to be done with all that, but at least they are a bit amusing and they are over here.

It's been very wet lately but fortunately they've been in no hurry to retrieve their laundry or rugs