~o~
Sunday 16th 45F. Heavily overcast. Light showers possible. Up at 5.30 to escape from my haunting memories.
7.00 Breakfast over and I have cabin fever already. I drove back from town the other day. By a route I often cycled in the past. It is odd how some villages rise in average quality and appearance. Every house pristine and their gardens well furnished and presentable. Lawns manicured by costly robots. Smart cars shining in every driveway.
While other hamlets fester. Every house unloved. Every garden filled with detritus. Much of which a landfill dump would probably reject at the gates. There are no minimum, agreed living standards. Below which one may not sink. If only to protect the other inhabitants. Local government has funds for rural slum clearance but they must be exceedingly meager. Rotting, abandoned dumps exist for years and are rarely demolished. The gardens decorated with rusting vehicles without number plates. Or the mere pretense of building work in progress.
That said, some of the unloved houses. Which we carefully researched as a potential upgrade. Within our own exceedingly meager budget, have gone. Our escape from hellish neighbours was not to be. At least, not in my wife's lifetime. "They" were forced out for unexpected reasons just as my wife died. She never knew that freedom of spirit which comes with empty "properties." Nor the stigma the abandoned home brings to an area. Often, all hope of modest pride in ownership, is trashed by a single owner.
Our protective fences and sturdy gates against neighbour's aggressive, free-range dogs. The towering hedges, to escape the leering drunks. Or carefully aimed, air rifle pellets. All this is gone, or tamed. The light now floods in. Where my wife insisted on heavy curtains. Or even translucent tarpaulins over windows for privacy and protection. All are swept away. My wife could no longer find many of the features. Which had become so deeply ingrained in our dim and sombre, blinkered existence.
There is a local "property developer" who buys up homes at forced auctions for pocket change. They are then partially demolished and simply left to rot. Often for a decade and counting. The gardens become dumping ground for every whim he finds at bankruptcy auctions. Or on a small ads website for unwanted junk. Dilapidated vehicles, building materials and machinery are dumped and left to fend for themselves.
He piles steel roofing sheets right beside the road. So that the wind blows the steel sheets across the highway. It lay there for days before it was cleared up. To be piled haphazardly near the road again. The nearest field is decorated with the same, lethal, steel roofing sheets. Brought there by the wind and moved on further in every new storm. The farmer came to manure his field and just seemed to work around the debris. That was ages ago and nothing has been done since. Imagine the damage these sheets could do to life, limb and property in another storm!
The number of real people's lives, this single person has ruined, must be almost countless by now. He buys a modest property for pennies. In any rural village or hamlet. Where somebody has died. Or fallen on hard times. Once he owns the house he destroys the property value of every home around. By means of the instant pigsty he creates. He fells landmark, sheltering trees and imports Japanese Knotweed.
The "For Sale" signs go up all around his latest acquisition. Though few seem to sell. He removes windows and doors and piles assorted junk inside and outside these "properties." The junk sits there slowly rotting, rusting or growing moss. Boundary hedges grow wild. Impeding traffic along the roads, lanes and private drives. No building work is ever done. Not once the initial destruction has taken place. So neighbours must live with a hideous, roofless, windowless, rat-infested skeleton. Next door, for years and years.
I spoke to him once about the ruin he had just caused nearby. "It's always The Wife who complains," he said. Completely dismissing his personal role and responsibility. For the continuing destruction of Danish society, values and expected norms.
Were I to publish any images of his assorted sites of raving lunacy. It is He, who would be protected, by stringent privacy laws. Let me just say that you would simply not believe a single example of his deliberate mayhem in local villages and hamlets.
There is even an international business, which tried to buy him out. Their offers were refused. His garbage collection, on the drive leading to this business, can be seen from space! No doubt the EU still pays him agricultural support. For the land on which he has dumped his crap over the last decade.
The house he claims to be his home has had doors and windows missing for a decade. The roof was never finished. So the roofing felt flaps in shreds. Green slime runs down the walls where no gutters were ever erected. Self-seeded trees throw branches up through the debris surrounding the house.
My walk, this morning, was extended. When I chose to avoid the all-too familiar lanes. I passed the marsh pond. Where was not a single water bird to be seen again. Further on there were four hares sitting to attention. They retreated, in turns, to the marsh woods as I approached.
I plodded on uphill to the beech forest summit. Before descending back to the road by the steep track. The mud caked onto my boots was steadily reduced. By deliberately sticking to the grass verges on the way home. Pairs of geese, grazing out on the fields, took off and did noisy circuits at intervals. Don't ask me why.
14.45. 53F. Still overcast. I have safely returned from a 34km ride. It was only supposed to take me to a village supermarket but I ended up in town. Then just had to meander back home via lots of winding and hilly lanes. With a modest headwind and spots of rain adding to the difficulty of being a slightly unfit, old fart.
I helped a chap repairing his digger as I passed through a village. A pin needed knocking out of the hydraulics. So I held a punch while he hit it with a very large, lump hammer. Eventually, we were successful. Lunch was an hour late and bereft of bananas yet again.
The potatoes were soft and covered in shoots. So I couldn't progress with a normal Sunday dinner. I went with chicken and mushrooms. Plus pasta, carrots and peas. I wanted to add gravy but wasn't sure it goes with pasta. I started cooking the sliced carrots and then added the pasta and peas later. Plenty of salt in the saucepan made it edible. Last time I forgot the salt and it was horribly bland. I think that gravy would probably help.
~o~
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