Bad Lot Family

[smokingboot]

We finally picked the apples off our tree. There are a lot less than last year, though that might be because we left it too late and the ground was covered with bruised windfalls. We picked some blackberries, and they seem to be old and tired too, it's like everything ripened in a rush between June and August; strange to see Autumn fruits over so soon. We made a crumble last night, along with our first attempt at baking bread together, a white bloomer that looked a bit odd but tasted delicious. The Sunday Roast also happened, and between white wine and rosemary and fresh bread and crumble with custard, it was a gentle and very luscious day.

While I was up a ladder in a tree, one of our neighbours came out and whispered over the fence at us about the new family, who have moved a few doors down from her. Turns out they are a Bad Lot.

'You must have heard them screaming and yelling,' she said. We haven't, possibly because we have been deafened by Pogey's barking on the other side. Her story continued thus; one of the other neighbours had a vintage bike stolen from their garage, which was then spotted in mangled state in the garden of the Bad Lot Family. They claim they found the bike that way, and certainly it would be remarkably stupid to steal something and leave it in your yard for all to see. The police have been called, they are turning up some time this week. 'The landlord rents the place out through the council...he's a lovely man, we've spoken to him already. They have a staffie puppy,' said the neighbour, 'It's such a shame, they're shouting at it and smacking it...'

I was angry with myself for my first thought, which was, 'I do not want this s**t near me.' It's awful though, judgement by neighbourhood. 'Just thought I should warn you,' she said, 'I mean, you really ought to know, so's to, you know, be careful of stuff in your garage.'

I keep telling myself not to respond viscerally. There's really not very much in our garage, and anyway, we have a motion sensitive night light which often turns our back garden into a carnival of surprised foxes and cats. Also, it may just not be true. CCTV is an option, though I suspect, if our neighbour's reactions are anything to go by, Bad Lot family may well be made thoroughly unwelcome long before then. Chastisement of the unlawful is something of a grim local tradition:

Mrs. Anne and I rode under the man that hangs upon Shooter's Hill, and a filthy sight it was to see how his flesh is shrunk to his bones - Samuel Pepys' Diary, April 11, 1661