the golden girls

Quite some time ago I posted a story [aptly renamed “battle of the bins in the burbs”

by the insightful Andrew of High Riser fame]. 

Perhaps you’ll let me digress in a stream of Beckettish absurdity [not original]

A cow stood on the railroad track

The driver rang the bell

But did that cow move off the track?

It did – like ****** hell…

By which I mean to answer the question “has the battle with the bin duffer next door abated?” with the response “It has… like ***** hell.”

Oh, all right… here’s the rest of it so you can actually concentrate on the bin saga leaving me free to continue

There was a crash

A mighty smash!

Bits of cow did fill the air…

One teat fell into an old maid’s lap

Which did her bosom thrill;

She cried aloud to all the crowd

“My God… the driver’s killed!”

Now, back to the bins. Mr wotsisface has spent the last 12 months collecting photographic evidence of all the transgressions of all his neighbours. The housing estate is about 40 years old and most houses have single driveways.

We live on a very odd-shaped block which has a very small frontage and there is no room to expand. Aunty’s car is often blocked in by TO’s in the drive, while my lovely new blue broomstick is in the street. The nose of said broomstick protrudes across part of Bin Guardin's street frontage. He is always careful to park his car in such a way that it takes up two and a half car spaces, lest anyone have the gall to use any more of “his” parking space than I already steal.

The nice Mr C on the other side has adjusted to 21^st Century reality and extended his drive into garden space so it might accommodate family car, horse float, trailer, 4WD what pulls the float, and cars for each of his 3 adult kids, but we still have just a tiny single drive with a teeny tiny carport.

Mr C parked his work vehicle in front of the Bin Gaudin's place one day while rearranging deckchairs in his own parking lot. Motor still running, Mr C jumped out to make sure he was not obstructing any of Bin's drive and, before he could leap in again to reverse another 6 inches, Mr Bin leapt out with a camera and took shots from every angle to prove Mr C had parked illegally.

Every time a car moves, a photo is taken. Every possible combination and permutation of cars in streets and driveways has been recorded. It’s Google street-view to the nth degree.

TO pulled up in the end of the court a few weeks ago and Mr Bin Guardin started clicking away. TO alighted from her vehicle, turned to face him and said “Why can’t we just be good neighbours? What have we done to you?”

Not having a telephoto lens, he moved in physically rather than figuratively in order to get a closer shot of TO “taunting” him.

That’s when it happened. Something strange came over her, causing her to channel one of her alter egos – Lady Priscilla Beauchamp-Smythe who had romped and posed coquettishly on the grand piano wearing nothing but a pink leotard and a pair of diamante earrings at her 60^th birthday party.

Fast forward to the other night when two young but senior policemen, who had either ingested a lot of steroids while pumping iron or had failed to realise their T shirts were very tight, started knocking on doors in the court.

They had, it seems, a file 4 feet thick of the goings on in the court – including photos of a work vehicle obstructing Bin Guardin’s driveway, and a report from the man what drives the rubbish truck who had copped a heap of abuse on the aforementioned day of the battle of the bins.

[If the file contains some pseudo-titillating shots of Lady Priscilla, neither of these young chaps were about to admit to having seen them. Perhaps they aren’t as tough as they look?] But I digress again…

TO mentioned in the list of “it might have been him but we have no proof” incidents she was relating to the Peelers that her flagpole had mysteriously broken off at the base only weeks after it was first raised.

“Aha!” I happily leapt in, “So, you admit it wasn’t me!”

Do we feel threatened? I don’t. Not personally. The man has issues, but now that the council has advised everyone in the court where bins must be located for collection, he doesn’t bother me at all.

TO offered her own take on the situation… There is an elderly Aunt here, and TO and I were getting on [I kicked her under the table but she did not press charges]. TO feels a bit threatened.

“We’re just the Golden Girls”, she joked, “And I’m the slut”.

I waited til they left before suggesting they probably believe she is a slut, but are far too young to have any idea who the Golden Girls are.

Mr Bin Guardin has suggested we are all a bunch of racists. He always says hello and smiles to JJ when she sees him, but probably doesn’t realise our Filipina housemaid gets 35 cents an hour – way above the award. No need to pity her at all, really.