Sunday 24 June 2012

View from under-the-wood

Our name is pretty misleading. Unfortunately we don't live under or near a wood. We live about ten minutes drive from a wood though. But it's not ours. We live very close to the town centre of an Essex market town. In the manky bit of town. I've noticed if you live near a town hall your street will be looked after. The further away you are from the town dignitaries the more unkempt your street will be. We are the wrong side of the tracks (ring road).

Not only do we get the drunk teenagers using our road as a rat run from the infamous nightlife of our town and helping themselves to our wing mirrors but we get tons of rubbish from passers by and Tesco's loading bay who took it upon themselves to build yet another store in our town in the main road behind ours. Now I like to complain to the council and companies alot. In a rather Daily Mail way too. I'm a middle class snob like that. While I'm complaining I often say "shutup you moany old crow" to myself, thats how bad I am. So after sending off my umteenth complaint about litter on our road this week I decided I would do a regular post of how our street is looking with words and pictures in full technicolour (its the future). I'm sure the council are shaking in their boots about this as I'm obviously a big player in the blogging world (6 whole views to my site this morning, beat that facebook!).

This week the road has looked pretty appalling. Everyday I scream at the Boy and Girl to stop at the corner in case they fall on this

This was worse at the beginning of the week and was spread out a lot more - its basically a whole case of beer bottles someone has dropped coming back from the shops. The picture doesn't show it clearly but there are bottoms of the bottles sitting up waiting for someone to fall on. On Friday the Husband talked me out of going up the street with my broom to sweep it up.

Then there's this outside of Tesco's loading bay.

This level of litter is actually less than usual, but it had been windy so its probably blown into our gardens. But look at the big hole in the water manhole type thing. Its an Injury Lawyers For You waiting to happen isn't it. The pavement is in really bad nick since Tesco was built earlier this year and the pavement outside our houses is raised and cracked.

I've not had a chance to take a photo but opposite our house is a council owned building and even the outside of that is a disgrace. They keep the gardens nice so at least we can look at that but there is a jungle of weeds growing up the wall and in the cracks in the kerbs. It is a leafy borough, maybe that's why.

There are more pros living where we do than cons, I'll grant you that. The houses are lovely, the neighbours on the tiny terrace are all lovely families, we are a stones throw from school, the shops and station and are really close to big green spaces.  But walking down our street sometimes is like some medieval version of Richard Hammond's Wipeout. Instead of the mudpool you have to walk over glass in your flip flops carrying a small child. Instead of those balls to jump on you have to jump over big holes in the pavement. Instead of that pendulum pedestal thing you have to get disentangled from the jungle of weeds.


Here ends the view from under-the-wood for this week. Lets hope they like the sarcastic, patronising online form I filled out. Whats your street like? Bet its nicer than mine.

3 comments:

  1. Ha ha! I never knew you were a complainer, me too! Our road's ok as far as rubbish goes. We have lots of green space and several large lakes within a 10 min walk. Wish the shops and station were nearer though and basically that I still lived in London! Hope you are listened to soon. X

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  2. Great story, keep it up and shame the buggers, I found their email and emailed them a few times because our bins had not been emptied I used to sign of with "That grumpy old git at Number 5" finally I get and email from them, I had made their day and a bin lorry was on it's way... the power of the net... make yourself a nuisance xxx

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  3. Walk like a crab! I like it!

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