Today I will be mostly cutting my hedge

Being a Londoner, and coming from an area where nobody speaks the same language (mine is a minority one in East London, called ‘English’), I am used to having neighbours I don’t speak to.  Inner city Londoners keep themselves to themselves and live parallel lives.

And, to be fair, I don’t actually want to talk to my neighbours.  Neighbours are like door to door salesmen, they usually interrupt your life and talk at you when you don’t want them to, and whatever they are talking about usually either costs you money or time.

The mistake I made when first coming to Liverpool was in stopping and talking to one of my neighbours.  Well, the mistake I really made was the going in and sitting down on her sofa whilst she told me her life story, the rules of the road I’d moved into, and the history of everybody who’d lived in my house before me.  Oh, and how I must cut my hedge.

Boxes were still being unpacked, and already I was under orders from this 900 year old retired widow to cut the dividing hedge.  I agreed to, and of course promptly forgot.

A week passed and there she was as soon as I got home waiting on her doorstep, calling me over and reminding me about the hedge.

Now, it has to be said that the hedge is not tall or causing any real issue, it’s just, well, unkempt and growing straggly.  Hedge anoraks like to have them all straight and neat.  My neighbour is a hedge anorak.

So, that weekend I fashioned the hedge into a somewhat neater and ‘trimmed bush’ (snigger) state.  However, it was too long, she said.  It needed to be a lot smaller.  The previous occupants of the house had let it grow so tall and wide (it wasn’t really either), and she was sure they’d done it to annoy her.  And, when was I going to sort out the rest of the garden?

Aha.  Yes, I was beginning to understand.  And, I was beginning to resent having ever spoken to her.  And I was beginning to rebel.  And I now hated her.  But, she’s a little old lady living all on her own, so we must allow them to behave this way.  We must grin and bear it.

The weeks passed and hedge conversations were supplemented by requests to pick up ‘half loaves’ from a supermarket.  We of course went out of our way to find the specific type of bread she was after, making an unscheduled trip.  The bread was wrong because it was a ‘full loaf’ and so she didn’t want it.  We should have travelled to a different supermarket in search of the half loaves.  Despite my protests that it was just the same, only a full loaf, and I’d gladly empty half of it in order to make it right, we made the additional journey to a far away supermarket in order to buy the half loaf version of the bread.

‘Halfloafgate’ was the tipping point.  It was after this episode that I vowed to never cut my hedge again.

But, by this time I was already ensnared.  Despite working for 18 hours at a time and getting home exhausted, she would be there waiting with more demands.  Could we just drop her three streets away at her friends house and then come and pick her up later, could we just pop down the road and get chocolate, the right kind of chocolate, could we pop in and help her change the doilies on the back of her sofa, could we pick up the crisp packet that had blown in on the wind and parked itself in her back garden, could we, could we, could we…

By now we were coming home very quietly and turning the car lights off and ‘silent running’ in order to tip-toe into the house without being seen.  During the freezing cold weather the summons came not from the doorstep, but from phonecalls to the house phone which would arrive within 30 seconds of us getting in.  We learned very quickly to let the answerphone always answer.  Yet she would record her demands and then ring back every 20 minutes until we’d either complied or acknowledged receipt of our orders.

Depending on what she thought she could get away with, the demands were peppered with direct insults about the hedge.  She would be outright rude and aggressive about it.  However, she is a little old lady, so we’d just stand there looking at the ground like little children being told off at school.

And, of course, back in the safety of our own home we’d moan about her.  We’d obsess about her obsessing about the hedge, and how we were under siege from her demands.  After working nights and trying sleep by day, it would be her persistent calls that would wake us from our slumbers so that we could go and look for a button she’d lost off her blouse 4 days ago, which must be searched for right this second or the world will end.

She hates cats.  She really hates cats.  Cats conspire against her and pooh in her garden.  All the neighbourhood’s cats are evil.  So, when we acquired two rescue cats, it was 3 or 4 months before she knew they were ours, as we were far too frightened to tell her.

“Oh for fuck’s sake, what is wrong with you people?” she screamed at us when that awkward confrontation finally came.  One of our cats had decided to walk in through the front door with us in full view of our lovely neighbour. “A cat’s gone in your house! A cat’s gone in your house!” she insisted as she pointed feverishly at the cat that had just gone in our house.  So, we were forced to say, “Yes, it’s one of ours.”

The cats and how terrible it was that we had cats supplemented moans about the ever increasing hedge.  And to this day remain on rotation inbetween demands that we fly to the moon in order to pick up a bit of moon-rock in order that she can use it as a door-stop.

Anyway.

Today I was looking at our mighty fine hedge.  With the best will in the world, I can no longer justify not cutting it. So, today I am charging up the hedge trimmer, and today I will be stepping out into the danger zone and I will cut the hedge, no doubt with a disapproving neighbour telling me I’m not making it short enough and watching my every move.

If your hear in the news that an old woman has been attacked by a neighbour wielding a hedge trimmer, you’ll now know the back-story.