It Looks Like War

Guerrilla leafleters were out and about last night.
Posters have appeared on the trees of Aliens Rd rallying us to save them ALL from being cut down.
Having thought about it and after some consultation with Dad, I’ve decided that taking the tree down may cause more damage to Sleepy Mansions than leaving it there.
The house already leans noticeably to the right so fuck knows what dying, shrinking roots would do.
Probably make it collapse in on itself like the Money Pit that it is.
So I ‘phoned the number on the poster to find out what was going on.

I got through to Shirley McSurly at the council helpdesk.
Fucking misnomer that.
It went like this.
“Good Morning, could you tell me what is happening to the trees in Aliens Rd please?”
Huge sigh, then she started to talk.
From her tone and pitch I could tell this wasn’t her first call of the day on the subject, so I stopped her.
“Stop. Just tell me, are ALL of the trees being cut down?”
Huge sigh,
‘No-ah. Just the diseased, the dangerous and those causing damage to property’.
“What if cutting the trees down actually causes damage to my property? What happens then?”
‘You’d have to take that up with Colas.’
“Why have we only been given a week’s notice that works were going to occur but no mention that trees were going to be cut down? Is that so we couldn’t do anything about it?”
‘You were informed in December that this was happening.’
“Liar! I have the letter in front of me dated the 9th of January!”
‘You were….’
“Liar!”
‘If you continue to be aggressive I will hang up on you.’
Talk about a red rag!
I was almost biting my knuckle with effort to keep ‘it’ in.
I couldn’t.
“Fucking Liars!”
She hung up.

Later in the afternoon Colas people turned up, looked at the posters and spoke on mobile phones.
I tried to speak to one of them but they were having none of it and were in their van and gone pretty swiftish.
Sassy found out from her emails to our local Councillors that 12 of the 15 trees along the road are marked for death.
Not good.

Housemate Pat is home.
Today she cooked something that smelled so rank, I puked in the sink seconds after walking in to the kitchen.
“You sick?” she said.
‘Er, fucking YES!’
“You eat something bad?”
‘No! I smelled something bad!’
She laughed at my little ‘joke’ and trundled off upstairs with her bowl of slurry.
I’m fighting my every instinct to hide the saucepans.

It’s about time someone said something.
Fucking knob.
Where’s a Muslim fundamentalist when you need one?

Best text of the day was from a train using Sassy,
‘Goats! Fucking Goats at Kentish Town!’