How The Other Half Lives

Every now and then my boring, staid life is brightened by the opportunity to see how the other half lives.

I was about to get breakfast in my flat this morning, having cleared my emails and done the usual Friday domestic chores of taking the rubbish and recycling down to the gate, when all hell broke out next door.

I’m not exactly sure what it was all about, but two women were arguing like the proverbial shrews.

I couldn’t help but hear this. It was all going on in the yard next door and the women had voice volumes that would have been at home making public address announcements at the next Olympic Games in China.

Then again, the Chinese authorities would have probably censored the announcements since they seem to include a large number of expletives and accusations of one or the other being a whore, slag, or slut.

There are two men and a woman living next door (Don’t ask. I daren’t!) and these two live-in guys were standing in the middle of the warring factions looking most uncomfortable, standing first on one foot and then the other, like herons with sore feet. Then again, one of the guys has a false leg (This guy is not a nice person. My landlord calls him a loose cannon. I have other words for him, none of which I dare repeat here) so I guess he was standing on one foot then a stump. But, I digress…

The women – the older one who lived next door, and the other younger one who may have been the older woman’s daughter – continued to scream obscenities at each other with the volume and anger growing by the minute.

It got to the stage that they sounded so angry I thought they were going to attack each other, probably with some uniquely female-favoured weapon like knitting needles (although crochet needles are worse. They have barbs, and barbs can do lots of nasty damage. Just ask Steve Irwin. Oh, that’s right. You can’t. He’s dead. ~sigh~)

At one stage there, the older woman accused the younger one of sleeping with Chris. Now I gather that Chris was quite young because the younger woman screamingly advised the neighbourhood that she hadn’t rooted Chris and she regarded him as a son. I found myself wondering if the other neighbours were also pondering the popularity of incest.

Then the younger woman turned and advanced on Pegleg Pete.

“Did you tell her that I was rooting Chris?” she screamed.

With a tall angry lady advancing on him, Ankleless Arnold stepped back a little and quickly said
“I didn’t tell anyone that.” Ah, bravery from a loose cannon.

At this point I decided that Captain Spunkbubble was needed. Well, catfights are all very well but if they really got their claws out and the police got involved, as a witness I was going to be dragged away from my work for heaven-knows-how-long talking to policemen.

So I walked out into the back yard and said very loudly over the low fence:
“Could you please take your argument inside.”

There was a second’s silence before Limbless Larry said “Why don’t you mind your own business?”

Geez, some guys just don’t like being rescued from their own cesspools.

I just shrugged and said; “Listen mate, when the noise disturbs the whole neighbourhood, it is my business.”

Legless Lenny just had to avoid seeing the sense of that and decided to call me a dickhead and a few other things besides. It occurred to me that he was sounding just like the women. Which only goes to prove, I guess, that stupidity attracts stupidity.

So I just shrugged and said: “OK, if you don’t want to quieten down, I’ll just ring the cops and get them to do it.” And walked back inside.

As I walked back into the house, Pinless Pat proved to all in sundry just how thick he was by yelling: “You do that!”

I didn’t ring the cops. I didn’t need to bother. The fighting ceased immediately. I heard the car door slam as the younger woman got back into her car then, with a roar of engine and a squeal of tyres, she left.

Sitting inside, through the open door I heard Footfree Fred get his own. The older women started yelling at him, telling him that he hadn’t supported her in the argument.

Toeless Terry proved, yet again, his stupidity. Rule One: When an angry woman wants to argue, don’t argue back. He argued back.

The result was that she loudly proclaimed that Kneefree Norm had showed his lack of loyalty and she wasn’t staying around. Then I heard her call her scruffy dog to her as she walked away up the road. A minute later, I heard Calfless Craig climb into his ratty old SUV and disappear up the road. Whether it was to find his lady friend and bring her back, or go the pub and drown his sorrows, I know not. Although I’d plump for the latter.

Ah yes, the life of the stressed-up other half. When I was thinking about all this I couldn’t help but remember what friend Teresa, who used to teach in New Zealand but now teaches tiddlies in Japan, told me yesterday.

She said:
“My best Show and Tell happened at Takanini School when a little Maori girl told us that her Mum was very bad. I said why? She said her mum had stabbed their dog and it died. I haven’t forgotten that one.....”

Ah yes. Anyone for a gated community?