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Walking to the bus Friday morning I hear an update of Game 6 of the World Series and it takes me a moment to find that strange, seeing as it was on Radio 4 which is not known for sports coverage and furthermore in England where baseball is held in especially low esteem.  Fortunately I had the presence of mind to yank the earphones away from my head before I got any of the details they were about to spill (at the time, I believe, it was the top of the 10th inning just after the Cards tied things up having been down to the last strike). I put myself into baseball exile and avoided emails from friends that would likely follow the Series until Saturday afternoon when, too sick from a sinus infection to go to the Swindon Beer Festival (but not too sick to do some CPP-coding) I fired up the 6th and 7th games (thanks, Pirate Bay) to have my own private double-header running in the background complete with half a crate of beer and some burritos.

Normally, I wouldn’t care about a Series that doesn’t involve Atlanta or a Chicago franchise but the only World Series game I ever attended was St Louis vs Kansas City in Busch Stadium on tickets comped by Augie Busch to liquor store managers in the county; the owners of my store took games four and five hoping to be there when the trophy was raised.  The one I saw was St Louis’ first loss in the Series which they went on to lose in 7; no longer actually working at the liquor store by then, I had moved back to Atlanta to work in a not-quite-reputable business for some, erm, friends who had insisted I take the job a week earlier and drove up (twelve hours each way) to go to this one on the two days off they allowed me the next month.  The Cards seem to be doing better, these days, as am I.

OH YEAH! The Pirate Bay fixed me up proper another time this weekend…Beavis and Butthead are back on the air in the States.  I noticed they don’t have the “don’t try this at home” disclaimer anymore.  Beavis was touched.  Heh. Heh, heh. [I did mention I was sick all weekend, right?]

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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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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

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Update on 13th August 2011 — Okay, fair enough…some of you have taken offense at the smarmy tone of this post. I’m sure you will all feel vindicated by this ‘proper’ press article: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/08/13/edl-to-gather-in-telford_n_926111.html

Telford is a shit hole.  There’s no two ways about it, and that’s a shame because for a new city it has avoided a lot of the architectural and city-planning gaffes that make Milton Keynes such a shit hole.  Telford has its share of run down council housing but nothing too dangerous looking; moreover, it has large neighborhoods filled with trees and what appears to be decent housing.

They put up a mall and couldn't incorporate this historic chapel, choosing instead to dismantle it and put it in a playground...tsk

So, what makes it so shitty?  Ah, the people do and they seem proud of the fact.  If there was any demand for a restaurant that served anything other than a carvery with a buffet of slimy, overcooked vegetables (even by English standards) then we wouldn’t have spent two hours driving around looking for a place to eat.  Even the chippies and kebab places were shuttered as if awaiting a riot.

Finally, we spotted a Greene King pub and while the food isn’t great at these, they serve it hot, cheap, and with beer; unless you are in Dawley, Telford and the signs showing the food that draw you in didn’t mention that the kitchen closed sometime before 8pm when you arrived.  Granted, the blokes were helpful, directing us back to a mall Wetherspoons on a Friday night (I knew it was a bad idea to start, but I really wanted to see just how bad…and maybe I’d be wrong and could get a plate of pasta and a beer).  Before we set off to the Wetherspoons fiasco, we did note one progressive sign on the wall of the pub:

The Wetherspoons was adjacent to an ASDA grocery store but it should probably be renamed ASBO, from the swarms of drunken teenagers hanging about.  It has been a long time since I’ve seen that many white trash kids in one place…back home it would usually only happen when a Molly Hatchett tribute band was in town, or the carnival (everyone wants to go see their daddy if his tou comes near enough, don’t they?).  And, the girls…obviously they spent all the money from their pole dancing tips on eye makeup because there wasn’t enough left to buy a skirt to cover their cooters (bless ‘em)…or maybe they just needed to air out their genitals, it’s really hard to be certain.

NOT a Telford shop window

The Wetherspoons had bouncers that let us through but the place was 8 deep at the bar (where we would have ordered food or at least a round as it was going to be worth it to watch one or two of the inevitable fights that was imminent).  Instead, we just went to the ASDA and got some sandwich makings and headed back to the hotel room.

Mmmm...the healthy choice for supper

The next morning, I went for a nice run through the area to see, up close, what sort of environment was responsible for producing this many miscreants which thrives merely on copious quantities of alcopops and anonymous sex (hey, not that there’s anything wrong with it…I was young once too; but 1) you’d have to substitute “powerful psychedelics” for alcopops, 2) to this day I only tolerate, very well thank you, but not thrive on, large volumes of alcohol, and 3) I’ve always needed an occasional pizza or other nourishment).

Trotting over the streets glistening with vomit and broken glass, I was surprised at the lack of graffiti.  I can only suspect that the Telford Town Council has somehow found a way of channeling this undesirable behaviour:

There were some pleasantly wooded trails, and I only was a little shocked when I saw the first female condom I have seen in years, this one in Telford slag-size:

So if you’ve never been to Telford I hope you found this informative but I do encourage you to investigate it for yourselves.  A good source are the Telford pages on another blog I frequent, with one example here, and another, less well written one here.  Cheers.