Is this annoying? Is this? Is this annoying? Is this? How about now?
Mar 10th, 2008 by handolio
I’m awake at 6am and have been for a couple of hours. The weather forecasters weren’t shitting about this storm, then.
So, living about 200 metres from the sea, my bedroom window is being alternately sucked out and pushed in, my tenant’s door is rattling like a bastard, and the fire escape platform sounds like it’s in danger of being wrenched off the flat.
But it’s not these things that are keeping me awake. It’s the plastic plant pots that my seaward neighbours put out on the fire escape, because, you know, plastic’s likely to stand its ground in an 80mph coastal gale.
I have two rhodedendrons in terracotta pots, each of which weighs probably 10kg and one of which has been blown over tonight. The plastic pot in question is being stirred in furious circles around them, smacking every bar of the fire escape railings like a child with a stick and a point to make.
I tried to open the window to reclaim said plastic plant pot, adding it to two I retrieved in an earlier storm, but oh, that’s right, there’s an 80mph coastal gale on the other side of it. It didn’t go down too well.
Now the pot’s being driven into my windows for a bit of variation.
I just wanted you to know that.
Should be lively up in our penthouse office suite today then – I’m imagining wearing a sou’wester and yelling batten down the hatches a fair bit! Bring yer noise cancellers and have a nap under the desk is my suggestion…
BTW – I note that RANT is the largest word (along with BBC) in your tag cloud… nice!
“Bastard annoying neighbours” – That’s the best tag I’ve seen in a while . . .
If you did a tag cloud of Handolio’s interjections in the workplace (you should hear them even above the gales), I think RANT would feature most prominently in that too.
Incidentally, I have a mental image of thousands of English people looking out into their gardens this morning and exclaiming “ooh, me pot’s blown over” in Bill Hicks’ cod-Cockney accent (“Mummy, I woke up today and someone’s put a Lincoln Log in me sock drawer!”).
Took some photos on the way in to work (just after the horizontal sleet storm), and again at lunch. Have never seen anything like the state of the sea earlier.
Should point out that the broken flower pot pic I’ve retro-added to this post was outside the Blue Man restaurant in Little East Street.
You think *your* neighbours are bad. Someone told me yesterday about a conversation her friend had just had with their next door neighbour. It went something like this.
Friend (answering front door at 9am to find neighbour standing there): Good morning.
Neighbour: Morning. Did you see that half of your roof fell off in the gales last night?
Friend: Oh, goodness! No wonder the wind seemed particularly noisy. Thanks very much for letting us know.
Neighbour: Yeah, well, that’s not why I came round.
Friend: Oh?
Neighbour: Thing is, some of the tiles from your roof hit one of my flower pots and broke it.