Just when we thought we'd seen the last of him a ghost from the recent past is returning, taking a lease on the house two doors down from us. These are mid-nineteenth century terraced cottages. In this town the tendency was to put a right-of-way around the buildings and provide small gardens behind, beyond the right of way. What this means in practice is that one's neighbors (and the rest of the world too, for that matter) have the right to gallumph about on the three or so foot wide path that runs across one's home bisecting what is otherwise one's private property and personal space. Our particular block is offset from the road and therefore provided with front and back gardens; that didn't stop the people who laid the land out putting a RoW right round the block. It might look like a ring but it feels like a fucking noose.
It was ok at first because we are the furthest from the road. We went back and forth past our neighbors front doors, so they could monitor our comings and goings (whether they wanted to or not) but we were pretty oblivious to them. Then couple moved into the property on the other side from the rest of the terrace and introduced themselves by bringing down the tall hedge that had at least given privacy from that direction. Now we had a tree house overlooking the what had once been secluded, and a row of windows visible in the houses stetching away into the distance. So much for a quiet sunbathe then.
Endless local FM played at full volume topped the whole thing off perfectly. It had been an oasis and it no longer felt like mine. It was about this time I really started to neglect the garden. If I couldn't enjoy the fruits of my labour I wasn't going to fucking well do much.
Then the house next to ours in the terrace was bought by the eldest son of the people who'd moved in on the other side. They took the idea of the Right of Way and ran with it. Up would come a fence panel on a good day (and by good I mean a day when the weather was fine and everyone could get out) and our little RoW would resemble Oxford Street with a constant stream of grand-parents, kids, grand kids, aunts, uncles, cousins and assorted hangers-on.
Cooped up in the house without a career or a job or any prospect of escape, waiting for approval of my visa, money running out, shit-bag husband; that was what my life was like.
When the approval of my visa application came through I found I'd graciously been given two years, with the promise of an extra two years to follow if I behaved myself and handed over further great wodges of money we don't really have.
It is difficult enought to get a fairly good job, from scratch, at my age and as far as I've been able to determine impossible when the Home Office has reserved the right to fling me out without any right of appeal if it gets in a Mood. No employer can offer me a contract longer than the outstanding length of the visa which means I have absolutely fuck-all security of employment. Which means we can't remortgage, to lengthen the term and ease the strain at least in the short term.
Things don't look too bad, but only when viewed through the bottom of a glass or bottle.
Now I'm going to be made more miserable than ever with the arrival at the end of the month of the Poor Sod who left our employ back in early July. He was a fucking nightmare as a colleague, now he's going to just be one of the crowd as a fucking nightmare neighbour.
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