Way out West (incorporating Way up North)

horticultural terrorism

For some time I believed I had invented the concept of horticultural terrorism, my floral insults include writing insults in crocuses on someone's lawn, planting runner beans and broad beans in a retirement village in Surrey, and in the same village of the damned (about which I may yet be tempted to blog), liberally seeding nasturtiums in their manicured woodlands.

Whilst passing through the BBC website, I came across this offering:

Mrs Irene Graham of Thorpe Avenue, Boscombe, delighted the audience with her reminiscence of the German prisoner of war who was sent each week to do her garden. He was repatriated at the end of 1945, she recalled. "He'd always seemed a nice friendly chap, but when the crocuses came up in the middle of our lawn in February 1946, they spelt out Heil Hitler". (Bournemouth Evening Echo)

I'm not sure if this tells us more about Bournemouth, maybe he was trying to fit in? or about the chaps optimism, but hey, I've been comprehensively gazumped.

On the other hand, writing 'bollocks' in four foot high letters on somebody's lawn in fertiliser was startlingly effective, especially as the more you mowed it, the better it got, twenty odd years later, I wonder if it is still there?

Down by the Uxbridge Road end of Ealing there are a number of large victorian villas, which, in my youth were deliberately run down and in some cases had become squats. Now of course, these are improved up the gunwales, granite worktops and multiple dishwashers are de rigeur (this is a little known phenomenon, luxury apartments [as defined under the current building regulations] can now be so cramped as to make it almost impossible to store a full dinner setting, the solution is the double dishwasher, your dishes are simply washed and left in the machine, and next time round you use the other one and never need to store anything in the cupboards that you don't have. Not being in possession of a dishwasher, I don't fully understand.)

Meanwhile, back at the story; in the late 70's one of these solid victorian structures was indeed a squat, and inhabited by greasy long-haired heavy metal fans, who held loud parties and threw their empties out of the sliding sash windows. Not only that, but they were creative, and decorated their home, painting 'Motorhead' across the dirty brick frontage in white gloss paint. Twenty-five years on, after a deal of wirebrush work and specialist attention, it is still plainly visible, maybe there is some justice after all.

Actually there truly is sometimes. we used to have a neighbour who a) drove a red mercedes convertible, b) kept guns in the house, c) believed that he owned the parking space outside his house, and d) if someone parked in 'his' space would double park his car tight alongside the offender. The last time he did this, the innocent parker had to drive his car onto the pavement with considerable difficulty, he/she was a person of resource, and having extricated the car, came back and scored 'you c**t' in foot high letters on the drivers side of the car with a six inch nail. The car was sent away for a respray, but the abuse had gone right down to the bare metal, and a repaint simply made it look as though the words had been sprayed on. He sold the car.

While I'm here, 24 hour drinking hasn't exactly gripped Ealing (despite its reputation as the binge drinking centre of London), my local, which is independently owned and has occupied the same site since the 1600's, applied for a license to 1.00 a.m, local licensing authorities (two months after the supposed deadline), have granted them a license to 11.30 [half an hour extra for the benefit of people in sensible counties], this policy has been applied to all the small pubs and independants, the large chains and kiddy bars have all had their licenses granted as requested. So, the streets are filled with vomiting teenagers, as before, and the quiet pubs where you can avoid them are all shut well before I might choose to go to bed. Time to emigrate I think.

posted by Lampy @ 12/25/2005 12:33:00 am