Who Lives at No.5

Mrs Mad and the Damian Child

So far I have told you of some very strange people in my street. Unfortunately Madur at No.5 is just plain mad as a fish. She makes out that she speaks no English, spends all her time in the summer months shouting in the street about random things and lets her 5 year old son Damian run wild.

What is it about Asian people and mobile phones? I'm not trying to be racist here but I just don't get this need to share personal conversations with everyone around them. To be fair to Madur I haven't got a clue what she is talking about, however like Slicky next door she has very loud conversations at all times of the day and night. Perhaps its a religious observance thing in that maybe its unlucky in the Sikh faith to answer a phone indoors?

She has also done some very strange things in my time here on Churchfield Road. Most notably about a year ago she managed to fill everyone on our side of the streets back garden with sewage as she had blocked a shared drain by flushing cardboard down her loo.

Madur is nowhere near as annoying as Squeaker but she is very very loud at times. Often she is better than an alarm clock in the morning. It appears that she gets up with the larks and feels the need to go outside and start shouting. Its a bit like the Bagpuss thing when Madur gets up everyone in the street gets up, however I'm not sure whether Emily loves her?

Her son Damian is just as random as he runs wild in the street astride his killer tractor. Anyone driving into the street has to take great care as Damian whizzes around with no traffic sense whatsoever. He also knows no boundaries and is regularly found trapsing around other peoples gardens. This wouldnt be so bad but he leaves his mark in many ways. Damian breaks things, annoys pets and is definately not house trained yet!

I should finish by mentioning Taxi, Madurs long suffering husband. This guy is quiet and generally a very nice guy. However the only time you do tend hear him he is throwing up very loudly. This wouldnt be so bad if he did it in his toilet but Taxi has this great habit of running out his front door and chucking up in the street! This is just bizarre.

Who lives at No.4

It could be worse, you could be Soo!

How do begin to describe my other next door neighbour? At first glance Soo looks like your run of the mill lady in her mid 50's. Apart from the fact that she always looks like she's chewing a wasp you could mistake her for someone normal.

Generally for the first couple of years I was here Soo kept very much to herself. However she can be very random in that when you say "hello" to her she can either give you a smile in style of Dracula or she will ignore you completely. Soo is a receptionist at our local hospital and I can only think that she has many awards for her complete lack of people skills. On most days when you see her she looks as though she is about to explode with the inner rage of a Daily Mail reader!

Soo is yet another gardener in our street except she believes in the organic natural look. Her back garden is more overgrown than your average rainforest and she defends it with the zeal of any Amazonian tribesman. For all I know she actually does have poison darts ready to defend her territory. Good luck to anyone who threatens her with weedkiller or bug spray!

As I said apart from Soo's extreme bad humours she was pretty easy to ignore most of the time. However at the back end of last year Soo appears to have gone through either a mid-life crisis or a liberation depending on your point of view. Around September time last year an elderly lady moved in to lodge with Soo. To begin with I never thought very much of this until one night I was taken ill with a bad stomach and was up most of the night on the loo. If you've had a bad gut you'll know its not pleasant at any time but to be disturbed by very loud sex noises makes it even worse. Then came the horror of realising that this racket was in fact not coming from Slicky's side but was coming from Soo!!!

Now I should say straight away that I have nothing against this, but you don't expect it from from the over 50's. To be honest I had thought Soo wasn't interested at all nevermind being into older women! We instantly christened the new woman "Sex on Legs", not because she was a stunner but because it was stunning that she could manage it without her osteoporosis causing problems.

Things continued on pretty much the same with odd noises in the night for awhile. Then one Sunday when packing the car she and "sex on legs" must have decide to come out in public because there was a very public snogging session out from which made me want to bring up my lunch. I'm fairly certain that the curtain twitcher over the way was fairly disgusted as well because her windows were cleaned fairly soon afterwards to get a better view.

Sadly for Soo this relationship didn't last and "sex on legs" moved out at Easter this year. However there has been a positive procession of mature women staying over ever since. Not just one or two but dozens now and all this is flaunted in front of the street. My theory is that she is advertising on a website or one of the top catches on the local papers lesbian singles pages.

So this is Soo, bad tempered, awkward and capable of sucking lemons in more ways than one!

Who else lives at No. 2

Slicky and Squeaker

This is where life gets interesting! After Pru and Don moved out No.2 was bought by a young Indian woman who we heard from Pru was a supply teacher. In the first few days things were very quiet and she kept pretty much to herself. However when she did start talking the whole world took notice. Squeaker had come from Bradford and possessed a ultra high pitched West Yorkshire accent. Whats wrong with that I here you cry? Well nothing except when she talks her voice could grate cheese and dogs bark three streets away!

At first it looked like she would be living on her own apart from a visit from about 30 of her female relatives who helped her move in. So far so good, however about 6 weeks later a Porsche 911 rolls up at the door at 6am in the morning with music booming out at full blast. This signalled the arrival of Slicky to the street.

Slicky is in his mid to late 30's, loves flash cars and thinks he is it. He also appears to think that he is some sort of self help guru as he is always shouting into his mobile to some very dubious characters in the back garden at the top of his voice. Its is through these conversations out the back that we have discovered that he is a dentist who has been struck off for misappropriating dental drugs which he imported to the UK. Its impossible not to hear these conversations as they are on full volume and happen at all times of day. Slicky doesn't walk he kind of oozes around and is generally very sure of himself.

Admittedly things haven't really gone very well with Slicky and Squeaker since they moved in. But then they did lay claim to half our property and wanted to dig up our driveway. In fact the only time we have much contact with them is when they want something. This usually involves them wanting to change something or build. I should mention at this point that they do have access over our ground to get to their back garden. However Slicky seems to be waging a one man conquest to take over this ground for himself. Perhaps he is a distant relation to Attila the Hun or Napoleon?

Since moving in they have spent thousands of pounds doing up No.2, employing tradesmen that look like you've seen them before on Watchdog or Crimewatch. Often its funny as you just know that they are paying well over the odds just to get things done rather than do it themselves. In truth they don't do very much themselves and seem to gather local tradesmen like Pokemon cards. Some of these guys definately see them coming though. In March Squeaker spent huge somes of money getting the garden tidied and planted. She made sure that everyone around knew that she had spent over £400 plants for the garden. She didnt seem to notice though that most of the rubbish was 3 for £5 stickers from Asda???

About 4 months ago now Squeaker had a baby boy. Nothing wrong with this except for the first 6 weeks we heard nothing, not a peep from the wee fellow. Indeed for long enough we had a suspicion that they had swapped the kid for a Jaguar car that Slicky picked up for Squeaker even though she has extreme difficulties with driving.(More on this another day!) However the child has now appeared along with the good weather, but has come with the unfortunate side effect of Squeaker singing lulabies, which disturbs the local cannine population for miles around.

There's much more to tell about these two but we'll save this for another day.

Comments

Comments Thoughts and Abuse...

Just a small note to let everyone know that I have now activated the comments. Please feel free to say something about the blog. However I would ask that those in the know dont give away where I am or the real names of those involved.

Have a super time in the real world!

Who lives at No.2

Next door at No.2 is a difficult house to write about. Its story is really in two parts as over the three years I've been here two very different families have lived there. Therefore I think I'll do this in 2 parts and I'd better start with....

The Reclamation Giants (2006 - 2008)

Have do I describe Pru and Don? Both over 7ft tall (This is not made up!!!), working in law enforcement and addicted to collecting junk. In fact they had amassed so much junk that they put up a wooden shed like attachment to the house and a huge actual shed in the garden to house the stuff. It was funny that the first thing the new owner did was knock down the shed like lean to. I always thought it would blow over in a strong wind anyhow.

Its difficult to describe what they collected exactly because it seems that they just collected everything! CD's, furniture, nick nacks, everything under the sun if Don thought it would make something at an auction, on ebay or at a car boot. On one memorable occasion Don brought home a stuffed stags head which was manky and very unpleasant.

Pru and Don tried very hard to battle their car boot sale addiction but in the end it got the better of them and they had to move to a bigger house. The location of this new home is strangely in the geographical centre between seven of the local refuse dumps. I've never really been sure whether this was planned or an accident?

I should mention that Don left behind a lasting memorial to his work in the shape of a stair bannister rail which still hangs in the passage way outside and is a reminder to the local community of the collecting great he was. Many a car booter still stop by to stare at this rail in remembrance of the collecting great Don undoubtedly was.

Pru and Don were both larger than life characters and I'm sure we would have seen them in the street again if they could only climb over the mountains of junk to leave their new house.

They are much missed but its now a lot quieter as although I never said at the time you could hear Don quite clearly through the wall when he went to the loo!!

Who lives at No.1

The Gardening Hermits

At No.1 we have Ron and Madge, who by the looks of things may be the longest residents in the street. (Except for Nearly Dead Boy but more of him another day!) On the face of it they are your average retired couple, keep to themselves, look after the house, go out to the bingo a couple of times a week.

However this disguises the fact that they appear to have realised all the weirdness around them quite some time ago and have spent the last 10 years fortifying themselves against the world around them. Probably quite sensibly they tend to ignore everyone and keep out of the way as much as possible.

When I suggest that they have fortified themselves I mean this quite literally. Over the years they have built up high walls and fences around them to keep out the urban madness around them. They have a passion for gardening but you really wouldn't be surprised if underneath all the horticultural bliss they have a selection of former USSR surplus land mines and the odd man trap for good measure.

Ron and Madge run like clockwork doing the same things at the same time every week. Bingo Thursday and Saturday followed by a spot of shopping every Monday. You get the feeling that they may in fact be Ronski and Madgski forgotten KGB sleeper agents sent here in the 1950's with Burgess, McLean and Philby to spy on the good citizens of the East Midlands. Its very likely that comrade Stalin had a deep interest in all the sock making production around here.

It may well turn out that Ron and Madge are the Bond villains of the street. Who knows perhaps in their secret underground lair deep below No.1 they are actually running all the organised crime in Western Europe.

Next time they go shopping I think I'll keep a look out for any excess vodka or a copy of Pravdas this may confirm my suspicions about them. Its also worth looking out for Ron on Gardeners Question Time in the Baltic States just in case.

Dasvidanya!