No such thing as ghosts…

Was that the last leaf falling, the first­­ yet to be carved pumpkin grinning its empty way to the grave­? Halloween, Halloween, Halloween, Halloween… Shhhhhh you might wake the dead.

“I saw a ghost once,” they said.

Well, I’ve seen one or two along the way. Poor things; shivering in corners, attempting to make amends, not able to remember who they were, not knowing what they are. Lost things just trying to make themselves heard.

Not that we listen. No such thing as ghosts, they don’t exist, they’re a figment of an overactive imagination, a piece of undigested beef. Shadows, that’s all.

So why is it that on Halloween, the night of All Hallows, I listen for them?

Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

“Come in. I have a treat for you,” I say, and then, drawing close, I whisper in their overactively imagined ears, “You don’t exist by the way.”

And then they don’t. They leave with a smile, sometimes a wave, even a thumbs-up once. They vanish.

See, I told you. There’s no such thing as ghosts.

Moody Wales through the dirty windscreen..

The view as we came down the hill into Welsh Wales was a little daunting. I really must wash that windscreen.

Dali death...

Off and away for a few days to have a good think.

Charitable works...

I can’t remember the last time I saw a blind boy chained to a shop front. 

At one time it seemed that you couldn’t turn a corner without bumping into a girl or boy in callipers, three tiny kittens waiting to be drowned, a guide dog, a floppy eared spaniel, or a huge scary robin who had obviously been eating too many worms.

Yes, charity collection isn’t what it used to be. These days it’s all TV events, standing orders, free pens through the post, and enforced carrier bag filling at the supermarket - whether you want it or not.

The old ways seemed to work though. The blind boy and the children in callipers were pretty hard to pass without dropping a penny or two through the slots in their heads. The robin on the other hand was a little too scary for my liking, and as for those kittens and their damned milk bottles…

The high street used to be an assault course what with the big happy butcher and his cleaver, the paper boy in his thirties cap and the life size charity collection statues. Perhaps that’s why they seem to have disappeared, imagine the health and safety outcry if a small child got bitten by one of those fibre glass dogs or attacked by a ferocious robin.

It was the blind boy that I found the most upsetting though, eyes closed, angelic face, hands resting on a book he would never read. I used to think: ‘Well, at least he can’t see his bright yellow jumper. It makes him look a pansy.’ I was always a little worried that if I reached out and dropped a penny in his book that he might grab my hand and refuse to let me go.

I seem to remember a Humpty Dumpty collection box, but I really can’t remember what charity it was for. You still occasionally see a lifeboat collection box, usually at a lifeboat station, but most of the others are gone along with the names of some the charities. The Spastic Society is now Scope, the old name having too many negative connotations in this PC age and I’m sure the sight of a boy in callipers - even a plastic one - would be too much for today’s cotton wool kid wrapping parents.

Road rage...

This morning I watched helplessly as yet another front garden disappeared to make way for yet another car parking space. Just why people do this I have no idea. Our once beautiful, well appointed, road is being turned into an urban jungle by the very people who live there. The antique red sandstone walls that have stood for over 100 years are being pulled down, the front courtyards of tiny lawns, shrubbed borders, and flower beds ripped out so that a car can be parked where once birds sang and bees and butterflies fluttered.

This morning this was a garden with a front hedge, a side hedge, lavender beds, and somewhere to sit on a summer's evening. This evening it is an unfinished car park.

How stupid, how totally unnecessary, how completely brutal.

Of course, it’s all part of the modern disease of ownership and status, driven by the paranoia of ‘strangers’ potentially parking outside people’s houses and the perceived need for residents to be able to park their precious vehicles a few feet from their own front door.

How unnecessary, how totally stupid.

During the day parking in the road can be difficult. The policy of the council to make it hard for workers to park in Altrincham at low cost and to put parking meters on nearby residential streets, has led to this problem. Add to this the ludicrous demand for residents only parking and the issues are compounded, pushing ‘residents only’ people onto ‘non-residents only’ parking roads because they don’t want to have to pay for a second permit. Altogether it’s a recipe for the destruction of the road’s character; the very reason people moved into our road in the first place.

Until recently I could sit in my front garden and look out on trees and flowers and watch other residents doing the same. Increasingly I sit on my bench looking at cars and vans, hemmed in by lumps of metal squeezed into spaces far too tight for them.

Did I mention how stupid and unnecessary this is?

There is plenty of on-road parking outside working hours even with the less than thought-through actions of the council, or at least there would be if the people who have destroyed their gardens actually parked in the spaces they vandalised their frontages for.

But of course they don’t, instead they park on the road or across those bloody sanctimonious white lines in front of their paved open-fronted houses These same white lines further reduce on-road parking by being a car and a half lengths long, and are guarded with heated blood and threats. All a bit short sighted, selfish and bullying which is why I ignore them; after all they are only advisory, not legally binding and not prosecutable if infringed upon. Some residents even put cones out to protect these spaces while they are out for the day, which is illegal so I carefully move them to their empty drives.

It seems that the tiniest bit of inconvenience, sharing space they don’t actually own on the public highway, has driven some of my neighbours mad with ‘get off my land’ fever and they will do anything to protect their pitch. I’ve seen neighbours arguing with parked non-residents as if it really was their land and not the public highway. These are the same residents who’d rather destroy what little space and land they had then steal the road space in front of their house, marking it as their own.

I can’t understand why, given our houses are around 120 years old and each is part of a matching townhouse terrace, there isn’t a need for planning permission to change the frontage. This type of uncontrolled radical change is significant; unsightly at best, vandalism at worst and I would oppose it. But of course I don’t get the chance.

I generally like my neighbours. It’s a nice community. But when I see what has happened over the last 10 years, the negative changes these very same people have made to the look, feel, and harmony of the road, I am not at all sure that I like them as much as I used to or should.

Getting the wind up…

If there were cobwebs to be blown away, then yesterday was the day to do it.

It really was a blowing away day, a good drying day if only you could have stopped the sheets from being ripped from the line and cast into the atmosphere. A Dorothy day as I call them; I almost expected to see an old woman on a bicycle riding high above the houses in the air. Trees down, waterfalls running backwards, huge waves at the seaside, and suddenly the leaves – which have been clinging on valiantly – are dropped all over the ground.

It’s an occasional thing, this getting hit by the tail end of a hurricane; another example of the US bestowing us with their leftovers. I don’t mean that in an unkind way, but honestly I think people would be quite happy for them to keep it all to themselves. Of course, by the time it hits us it’s just a bad storm, the hurricane all hurricaned out, hardly any swish left in the tail, just a strong wind that’s all.

But I do so love a windy day.

Sometimes, when I’m on the beach on a windy day, I pick up carrier bags, hold them in the air to fill them with wind and when I let them go they fly away along the beach all of a tumbling scatter. Once I found a huge sheet of black polythene and spent a happy hour flying it like an untethered flag on two strings, one in each hand, a plastic magic carpet floating above the sand.

Walking home last evening I was treated to the sight of four carrier bags playing chase high in the air above the roofs of the three storey houses. Tesco, pound shop, Sainsbury; it almost seemed as if they were dancing as they ducked and dived, not quite falling to earth, to be scooped up by another gust to dance their merry dance once more. It’s amazing how beautiful carrier bags can seem when filled with wind and set free. They reminded me of strange birds in some weird mating ritual, or the urban kite flyers that I once watched from my hotel window in Hyderabad.

Willy wind - you can’t see him, you can’t touch him, but you can feel him, and when he's strong he can really put the wind up you.

Tales of the ivy….

You must be sick of seeing pictures of my backyard by now, tired of it. of course I never do, but then I have plans for my tiny pocket of sunshine. Look closely and you will see that this his picture is different. This one shows my yard after the bit of pottering about I decided on Sunday morning turned into a full blown clearing exercise.

I had already removed the miniature fir which had grown into a six foot tall four foot wide ball of dense needles and the extra light was impressive. So with that success under my gardening belt, I decided to tackle the ivy that creeps over from my neighbours and tumbles down my wall.

At first it was easyish going, my loppers, shears, and pruners soon cutting the ivy back so that I could see the coping stones on top of the wall for the first time in years. The corner was different though. The ivy in the corner had grown into a huge ball and on investigation the roots of the ivy had grown into the wall and lifted the coping stones. That ivy ball had to go, so taking my saw I attacked the six inch trunk that was firmly embedded into the brickwork. It wasn’t easy but eventually I got through, the ivy ball tumbling into the alley below.

It was at this point that I realised just how big it was – five feet wide and four feet high – a full seats-down, parcel shelf removed, car full - as we found to our cost. It took two trips to the tip to get rid of all the ivy that I’d removed and the green bin was jam-packed full.

As an afterthought I dug up the hideous rhododendron bush that had sat looking ugly in the corner for years. It won’t be missed, a single flower a year is hardly a show.

So now my yard has much more light, it's almost a blank canvas to start over again. I even had a visit from a robin as I toiled away, the first time a robin has visited my garden in over 25 years. A good omen I hope.

PS - Gotta love the gnomes.