My Street

My street is a fine example of honest endeavour and working class
aspiration, a place where people who once swung from lamp posts in
patched trousers now mow their lawns on a Saturday and buff their
Volvos on Sunday.

We have satellite dishes and coach lamps and wrought iron frippery. We have extensions, garden rooms and Austrian blinds and above all, we have the hard earned right to privacy, smugness and self induced
isolation. We have created semi-detached redoubts, protected by
double glazing, CCTV and alarm systems and we work tirelessly to
insure, secure and deter. No callers, hawkers, sugar borrowers or
tradesmen.

I know most people in the street well enough to exchange the odd word in passing and they all seem quite reasonable. I'm not sure about
Keith at number 45 though, I hear he's bit of a troublemaker. Plays
cricket for the village team and is forever arguing the toss with
opponents. He picked on the wrong bloke last week and got clobbered
with a cricket bat. He came home with his arm in a pot. I'm thinking
of asking him if he wants to borrow a knitting needle, but he has a
sign on his gate saying a Rottweiler lives there. Not sure what her
name is.

You would never know that there were children here, no cricket balls
flying over the wall. They slide silently past at the beginning and
end of each school day, laden with rucksacks and expectation;
Facebook grey. At week-ends, in the safety of their rooms, they play
imaginary games in imaginary places and evaporate into the world wide web; the most dangerous playground on the planet. Here they learn that you are never out if you don't want to be and that anyone who says you are, can be instantly eliminated.

All in all, there's not much to get annoyed about in our street, but I'm
beginning to take exception to Barry's cats next door. Cats aren't
like us, they don't conform or do their best to fit in. They crap on
my garden and hide in the flower beds waiting to kill unsuspecting
birds. Barry thinks the world of them , but I hate the bloody things
with a vengeance. Cold blooded killers stalking the street at will,
ignoring our boundaries and CCTV. I spoke to Barry about it just
before Christmas, but he just said there wasn't anything he could do.
He put festive collars on them for a couple of weeks that had
flashing lights, so I consoled myself by guessing where he'd shoved
the batteries.