Things that go bump in the daylight

Every now and again the Moroccan lady next door goes a bit loopy. She and her husband have recently returned from a two week holiday in Morocco.
They returned to find that their landlord had removed the rickety, dangerous wooden fence from around their garage roof top terrace, leaving it in a more open plan condition.
Their garage roof was a bit of a nightmare, it was littered with gas canisters, broken plastic chairs, a pair of crutches, large baby doll, old boots, plastic bags, scraps of food, bits of old wood, etc etc. I have never seen her husband do anything except drive his car, sit in the town square, or carry the occasional shopping bag full of groceries.
So, a girl comes back from her hols. All is calm, then her husband goes out. She then starts shouting. I am inside and can hear her vocalising but I ignore it. Banging, dragging and crashing sounds follow gradually seeping into my subconscious. No of course I wasn’t sleeping, I was just … resting my eyes.
The lady is dragging stuff about the garage roof and muttering darkly. She starts picking things up. Going to the front edge of the garage and hurling stuff onto the driveway below. This continues for some time, but due to the delay between pressing the camera shutter and it taking the photo, I only succeeded in getting one action shot. The angle of the shot also hides the amount of stuff thrown out.

Once the roof has been almost cleared, she stomps, or waddles and rolls back into the house. She returns with more items including rugs, which join the growing pile on the drive.
Hmmm I think to myself. I hope her husband doesn’t swing into the drive too fast, or he will crash into that.
The husband returns and stops before hitting the pile. I whizz off to get my camera again, but miss the initial getting out of the car, what the f*** look while the camera gets itself ready.
He stands trying to take it all in.

She comes out of the house onto the garage roof and starts shouting again. Words are exchanged (but not in French) and he reluctantly starts picking stuff up and taking it out onto the pavement, piling it up outside my wall.
A while later, there is more shouting, and a three-seater leather settee appears. Some time later this goes back into the house as negotiations are finalised and the treaty signed.
When I speak to Madame later, she tells me rather gleefully, that the lady is not at all content…
I am happy because they seem to have got the hang of phoning up the council to get the stuff removed, and furthermore the absence of the railings means that the granddaughter and grandson are not outside.
The little boy is a bit of a pest as he just keeps repeating Monsieur, Monsieur if he sees me in the garden. The girl chooses to use any vocabulary and just screams and screeches non-stop for hours at a time whenever she is outside and they never tell her to shut up. Her noises are so piercing that even if I am inside with the windows shut, there is no escape from it. Even Madame finds it too much.

More bin news

The weather has been too nice to spend time blog writing. Today winter has descended again though, so the shorts and sun cream have been put away for now and I am writing a few blog entries.
Just sitting around in the garden outside my tumbledown shed, I have been studying whilst keeping an eye on my parking area. Ah, the number of people who have slowed down, spotted me and set off again to park elsewhere. I have also been asked directions several time by passing motorists and pedestrians. Perhaps I should be charging for my services.
The main reason that I have been down the bottom of the garden is to keep an eye on my bin.
Last week I heard a strange noise. I looked out of my window and spotted a 20 something young lady who was suspiciously near to my wheelie bin, heading back up the road. Some time later I saw her putting her arm round my fence, lifting my bin lid and putting a bag of rubbish in. I was a bit busy at the time, but about ten minutes later, I made a coffee and set off downstairs to sit in my garden to intercept her if she should use my bin again.
I was just too late again and spotting me, she set off up the road at a brisk pace. Always one to lift the lid on a story, I opened my bin to find it two thirds full of black bags, containing clothes, cushions etc. I also noted that she had added an electric radiator to my neighbour’s crap heap but against my wall.
I dragged my bin away from the area near the pavement, and settled down on a chair to wait, should she return with more stuff. I rehearsed phrases like, this bin is on my property and is for the use of me and my tenants, take your shite and put it somewhere else please.
She did not return, (I was waiting for hours) but I noted that the house on the bend had a pile of stuff under its open windows.
Meanwhile the lady from the tip next door, had set off for the shops, spotted the radiator and had whisked it into her house.
If only wheelie bins were made of metal, you could wire them up to the mains….

Strippin’ and tippin’

My blog of two days ago has obviously had some repercussions. Eighteen years after the “phenomenal success” of The Chippendales, along with some new additions, the boys are back as a new rebranded group, 'Here Come The Boys'. They describe their new show as a musical with muscles. So that’s another of my ideas for income generation whipped out from under my feet.
Unless… How does the stage name “Rigsby’s Rising Damp” sound? Is it good enough to have the audience screaming for more (in disappointment)?

On the 27th April there will be a tribunal to decide if Cloe, the local lass who is currently Miss France, is to be stripped of her title after continued complaints from the runner-up in the regional heat. The problem seems to be that people on the judging panel must have no connection with the contestants. Cloe’s parents are allegedly connected by way of business with 2 people who were on the panel…… Such an easy mistake to have made.

Some of you may remember late last year, when my neighbour dumped a fetid old mattress on the pavement in front of my house. No? Well to recap. I chucked it back onto their property and It festered there for months while further crap was added to it by them. One morning I got a phone call from the Town hall asking if it was my mattress and was I not aware that if I phoned the council they would make a special trip and collect it for free. Well I dobbed my neighbours right in, and the next day all the items had been collected. I suspect that they council never actually spoke to my neighbours (who are Moroccan), because they are bloody well at it again. It is like the Borrowers but in reverse. The tiny Borrowers collected or borrowed other peoples (s)crap and made use of it, whereas the charming folk next door take stuff that was useful once and chuck it out on the pavement or on to my property. Probably unaware that the Borrowers do not actually exist. Madame put some of their old wood that had fallen off their terrace onto my garden, back onto their terrace today.Anyway, this is the evidence of the dumpee having a dump yesterday. I have not photographed the white metal box or cooker that is now in front of my wall

Rubbish and misunderstanding

I have been looking out of my front window. Yesterday a car whizzed down the road, jammed on its brakes and reversed to the parking of the flats opposite. Passenger got out, opened the boot, took out a big rubbish bag and put it into the big brown bin belonging to the flats.
The next day a different car did exactly the same manoeuvre.

Do they not like having rubbish in their own bins? Are they dumping toxic waste? Why would people travel around with a full rubbish bag in their boot (bit of the car from rear windscreen to rear number plate).
I thought that perhaps it could be that they live where there is so much snow, to refuse collection could not get to them. Also I remember seeing this happen last summer.
“Cherie, can you take me for a drive around town this afternoon?” “Doen’t be stupide Matilde, you know I always take the been bag out for a speen on Mercredis. Regardes
-toi the calendrier on ze wall”
While I have been talking rubbish, a couple of fellow bloggers Michelle and JNNR whose travails I follow have been agonising over weightier topics ranging from kitchen rehab, middle agedness / of the roadness, and looking like their mothers. I have been letting the side down.
GREAAAT! That is what blokes are for. We provide the light relief that make life worth living. The light, to the shade etc.

To clear up a recent case of mistaken identity.
This is a photo of my neighbour’s wife

This is a photo of Madame. It is easy to tell them apart as my neighbour’s wife does not have a bush. If you look carefully in

the top left you might be able to see Madame's dil

and some of her other herbs.

I would like to take this opportunity to warmly welcome a new lurker to my blog. Hello to NB, whose son O saw his first snow recently. Ah! The excitement of it all.

18.12.2008 Thurs – Clou less at last

Up relatively early thanks to the noisy bin men waking me up at 5.10am. The weather is still dull, but no more rain after last night’s showers.
I noticed that the neighbour’s manky old mattress and all his other junk has been removed from his drive / my wall.
I got a phone call from the Commune on Monday. Did I know that it was forbidden to dump items on the pavement? I said yes I knew that “Is that your mattress on the pavement?” “No I said, it is my neighbour’s. What is his house number? What is his name? I told them that I did not know the answer to either question and that we were not best buddies due to me not letting him park his car in my parking area (as long time readers will be aware).
I don’t know if they managed to contact the lazy sod, but the junk has finally gone after lying around for months. Hooray!!
I am starting to feel fitter.
This morning’s task was to have my slow leak investigated. Before you get too excited, it is one of my tyres that is leaking.
“Vulco” removed the tyres to investigate. The tyre mec quickly spotted a small nail located right in the middle of the tyre.

While I waited I took a photo of one of the businesses across the road.
Viewers of the TV comedy “Only fools and horses” will be familiar with Del Boy. I don’t know if the owner is a Brit or just a French fan, but I would have thought that connotations of Del Boy total incompetence and ‘ookey gear (goods of doubtful provenance) "Transports DELBOY" might not be the best marketing ploy ever.

The man in the tyre office was very keen to try out his English, which is unusual as most are too shy to try.
Tyre repaired, I parted with just under 30 euros, but now I don’t need to worry about remembering to pump up the tyre every week.
The bad news was that I could not remember the PIN for my carte bleu. Fortunately I had my big cheque book with me.
After going home to check my PIN, I headed out to Intermarche for a bit of shopping.
The sea food counters were groaning under the weight of the number and variety of fish on sale. There were also lots of boxes of oysters on offer. I didn’t see anyone rushing to buy them though. The big tank with the huge live crabs seems to have disappeared for the moment.
I don’t know about you but I prefer my supermarkets not to have crabs.

23 October Thursday - a load of old rubbish

Today was another painting and cleaning day. I gave the bedroom side hall a second coat and various parts of bedroom walls got 2 coats. The bed and various bits of furniture had to be moved to get access to wall. The small kitchen / washing machine / sink area will have to wait until another day as the walls there will need to be cleaned first. They are thick with grease as there is a cooker point there and no one has cleaned the walls for a long time. The roof is at its highest point here and the grease reaches right to the top.
The space available to work in is too narrow for my step ladders as they are, so I will need to take the supports off the ladders to fit into the gap.
I also painted hall 2 which leads from the bedroom to the toilet and to one of the two exit doors.
Next it was downstairs to paint some of the ceiling beams in the 1st floor studio.
This morning when I pulled the wheelie bin back onto my parking area, I watched the neighbour’s stained mattress (which he has dumped against my boundary wall) steaming as the sun gained heat. There is also a broken parasol and a box full of old kitchen pots etc on my wall.

In the afternoon I look out of the window and see the neighbour’s wife sitting on my parking area wall, presumably waiting for a lift from someone.









I think to myself, “He’s dumping his wife on my property now” and I go upstairs to take a photo. I decide to move the mattress etc back onto the neighbour’s property.






Much better position

By the time I get downstairs, the lady has gone. I duly move the rubbish from in front of my house.
It is time to pack up. My paint pad is too soggy and drippy to continue today.
I reply to Y’s email of the previous evening, saying that it is a pity that she is leaving the choir for this year.