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Subject: My other neighbors...
Not all of my neighbors are batshit insane like these ones. Some, like the family across the street, are quiet and friendly enough. The drunk uphill from us keeps to himself too, and he has a goat which balances his predilection for feeding stray cats...
The downhill neighbors tho are somewhere between the batshits and the rest. They live in one of several council houses, which is what they call the income-assisted housing around here. So, they're not really well off, and like many people in this bracket, they're rude, uncouth, loud, and breeding. They don't hassle us, which is great, but at night you can hear 'em cursing and arguing over really silly shit.
But they have kids, and the kids are awesome. Yesterday afternoon two girls came to our door, and said "Did you know you had an orange tree in your back yard?" I explained that it hadn't escaped our notice. They asked "Can we pick some of your oranges?"
I suggested that maybe they had already been picking them, 'cause there were a lot fewer on the tree now than there were a couple of weeks ago... I said they had guilty faces. Adamantly they denied any guilt, and so I told them yes, they can take as many oranges as they'd like, but they have to bring us back a few, before keeping the rest.
You just wouldn't have assumed this simple request would lead to such an adventure. They couldn't get our gate open, so I went outside to do it for them. One girl had no shoes, and there were prickly things on the lawn. I suggested she go home and get shoes, she claimed not to have any, and could she please borrow mine.
So I lent her my shoes. Then, they couldn't reach most of the oranges so ended up climbing the tree. I brought out the camera, but they needed so much help getting the oranges down I couldn't take any pictures. After instructing them on orange picking techniques that didn't involve destroying the tree I ended up with one girl scrambling over my head and shoulders to reach the highest oranges.
I hear a gruff man's voice from over the fence, "How did you get up there?" and the girl on my head says "I'm standing on a man!" So I met a guy she knows, who was very keen on getting a few oranges of his own. He watched for a few minutes while we picked oranges like some sort of clown routine, the girl on top of me shouting out vague directions like "Go this way!" and when I asked "Which way is that!?" the man says "To your right, mate" and so on.
Five minutes later the tree was mostly bereft of fruit, and these two girls were apparently champions of the world:
![[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/photos/Orange-Girls-1.jpg]](http://nfgworld.com/grafx/photos/Orange-Girls-1.jpg "http://nfgworld.com/grafx/photos/Orange-Girls-1.jpg")
You see the bag of oranges, but
do you see the ratbags?
![[Image: http://nfgworld.com/grafx/photos/Orange-Girls-2.jpg]](http://nfgworld.com/grafx/photos/Orange-Girls-2.jpg "http://nfgworld.com/grafx/photos/Orange-Girls-2.jpg")
The downhill neighbors tho are somewhere between the batshits and the rest. They live in one of several council houses, which is what they call the income-assisted housing around here. So, they're not really well off, and like many people in this bracket, they're rude, uncouth, loud, and breeding. They don't hassle us, which is great, but at night you can hear 'em cursing and arguing over really silly shit.
But they have kids, and the kids are awesome. Yesterday afternoon two girls came to our door, and said "Did you know you had an orange tree in your back yard?" I explained that it hadn't escaped our notice. They asked "Can we pick some of your oranges?"
I suggested that maybe they had already been picking them, 'cause there were a lot fewer on the tree now than there were a couple of weeks ago... I said they had guilty faces. Adamantly they denied any guilt, and so I told them yes, they can take as many oranges as they'd like, but they have to bring us back a few, before keeping the rest.
You just wouldn't have assumed this simple request would lead to such an adventure. They couldn't get our gate open, so I went outside to do it for them. One girl had no shoes, and there were prickly things on the lawn. I suggested she go home and get shoes, she claimed not to have any, and could she please borrow mine.
So I lent her my shoes. Then, they couldn't reach most of the oranges so ended up climbing the tree. I brought out the camera, but they needed so much help getting the oranges down I couldn't take any pictures. After instructing them on orange picking techniques that didn't involve destroying the tree I ended up with one girl scrambling over my head and shoulders to reach the highest oranges.
I hear a gruff man's voice from over the fence, "How did you get up there?" and the girl on my head says "I'm standing on a man!" So I met a guy she knows, who was very keen on getting a few oranges of his own. He watched for a few minutes while we picked oranges like some sort of clown routine, the girl on top of me shouting out vague directions like "Go this way!" and when I asked "Which way is that!?" the man says "To your right, mate" and so on.
Five minutes later the tree was mostly bereft of fruit, and these two girls were apparently champions of the world:
You see the bag of oranges, but
do you see the ratbags?
BLEARGH
This post was edited on 2011-09-23, 08:54 by