A Lousy Cartoon For A Lousy Saturday

 

I don’t know why I even bother blogging or working in the summer months. The traffic is so slow I begin to wonder if the internet is trying to pass a kidney stone. Even if every visitor to this blog is welcomed with open arms they usually brush me aside to ask directions to the pornography or pictures of Angelina Jolie’s tattoos.

I’m also not going to sit here for much longer. Not today. I was enjoying the calm of the morning, admiring the brilliance of the trailer for Bill Plympton’s new film when the noise began. The screaming, the splashing, the screaming, the splashing, the complaining, the crying, the screaming, the splashing, the roar of approval from granddad, the screaming, the splashing, the screaming, the splashing…

It’s hard to think. I might as well push on. No bugger will read this anyway. Let it be the stream of my consciousness as I sit here a moment longer and endure the infantile banter… I put on the hot cups of my headphones and listen to some classical music, which I rarely do since I can’t listen to music and write. Lyrics get in my head and their rhythms break the rhythms of my writing. Classical music is better but not perfect. I’m listening to Handel’s Sarabande from the Barry Lyndon soundtrack but the screams still break though. Handel never had to compete against kids doped on sugar and devolved DNA.

There is a simple explanation as to why this happens. My neighbours on one side are complete and utter bastards. From the other side, we never hear a thing. In fact, every other neighbour is quiet, their children quiet, the friends and relatives quiet. But my immediate neighbours, they are just that kind of selfish bastards indifferent to what other people think or feel. They are the perfect embodiment of white van man created by the Thatcher years: low skilled but highly waged, with money to burn on every crass entertainment produced in China for B&Q and Homebase. They buy into every crazy and fad. They are the people who will destroy the world with their unending need for material goods. Their five cars have turned their once lush verge into a patch of soil and covertly spread gravel. They park across the pavement and make people walk in the road. I used to enjoy looking at the stars until they plastered their garden with solar lamps and then installed a small mock Victorian street lamp that burns through the night. They have more money than sense and… and now the noise gets louder and I feel myself getting angry but I won’t get angry. I could stick my head out the window and blow a baleful blast of rage but I don’t do that. People like us don’t do that. We want a quiet life without any squabbles between neighbours. We turn the music louder until we can barely hear ourselves think. We grit out teeth and mutter between ourselves that people like this ruin the world and have they no consideration for other people.

‘Grandma!’

‘Grandma!’

‘Grandma!’

Have I ever mentioned that these kids don’t even live around here? We just get their noise.

I’ll get no work done today unless I go to the local library which might be my only option.

I hate the summer. Summer belongs to my neighbours, snout lizards of the lowest order of cretin.