Neighbourhood
And now, because this journal is very horticulturally-minded, and because we like a little bit of camp to brighten our day, some pictures of the beautiful wisteria that just happens to be growing over someone's back fence and into the car park of our flats:

We realise that this clashes a little bit with the colour scheme, but we're expecting the folks from Queer Eye round any time now to sort it out...

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Today has seen an event that initially made me laugh like a bastard, but then left me feeling that local human nature had run so true to form on this occasion that it almost wasn't funny. Almost.

As I previously mentioned in this post, our obnoxious local vicar has been the target of some thefts recently. Having put up a fortress-like set of iron railings round three sides of his church hall - a small and dingy prefab - he adorned the whole lot with an expensive set of copper carriage lamps. Naturally, within two weeks, the lot was nicked.

Well, the replacements were installed about three days ago.

And, guess what?

Today, my father and I were driving down the access road that links our flats with the outside world - by going through the vicar's churchyard, which is the major source of his obnoxiousness. Not a single light left, and a great big police van in the car park.

As I said at the top, schadenfreude aside, I feel a bit sorry for him. We were at the point of holding a sweepstake on how long it would take, but no-one was going to put money on just three days.

We are sure to get a letter through the door expressing his views on this event, and it is sure to be a work of unintentional comic genius. I will post it here.

As an amusing postscript, you will notice that I said the fortress-like railings extended around three sides of the prefab.

The fourth side, which backs onto some sheltered housing, is protected by a council fence consisting of a few iron bars painted green, reaching to waist-height. It would take about two minutes to get over it.

A chain is, after all, only as strong as its weakest link...