John told me before he left for the afternoon how close our friend had come to setting himself alight earlier when getting it going with a container of paraffin and some matches. He has no hair or eyebrows. This could be either because of illness or pyromania, but more likely just venerability and the rigours of outdoor gardening. I noticed one or two pictures taken of me recently - bending down to weed some leeks - show a potentially monastic pate. If working an allotment causes one to lose ones hair, is that in itself the price of a Robert Johnsonesque deal with the devil to get carrots to sprout?
Matey generously let me have some twine to tie up my tomatoes so I have decided to be his friend. It is just as well he has me as a new friend (a ready made fire warden). I went back at 6pm to do a bit of extra watering and pick some asparagus and he didn't even recognise me. There were several empty cans of White Lightning on the ground, the fire was out (having consumed only one third of the bonfire material, but most of the adjoining fence area between his plot and Johns) and he was tottering down the path commiting his brain first to controlling his left leg, and then his right, with barely enough capacity left to acknowledge any other task you might set before him, let alone incorporate it into his regime. I suspect his allotmenteering is an excuse to get away from it and get seriously trolleyed. I hope he continues to start his fires before he gets wasted.
I also had occasion to help the Romanian jazz-folk family next door with removing a satellite dish. This may mean they are leaving - to be replaced by who know who; we have had vietnamese cannabis farmers, lithuanian students, polish and kurdish families and the landlord himself lived there for a bit before he went to jail - or it may mean that their attempts (which included alot of shouting of advice from the wierd dad to the eldest of his sons) to jerry-rig Sky have finally been abandoned (you can't cheat Rupert Murdoch).
They are a curious bunch. They organise improptu jam sessions and accompany traditional Romanian songs by conjuring of the lift music stylings of Earl Klugh as backing. On two occasions I have thought that the lady of the house was being murdered and have asked the local bobby to drop by. It seems she just gets hysterically upset, although she may have just been singing a transylvanian lament. Either way the noise was so blood curdling any self-respecting vampire would have considered investing in a new fridge. I have also seen the patriarch clip one of his lads round the ear. He speaks no english but tried to sell me some old boots he had found. They were obviously not a pair and he was disappointed that I didn't accept his bargain offer. The missus reckons he has occasionally loomed in at the front window and offered to play us all some music. She replied that we didn't need him to come round as we could already hear it perfectly well from our bedroom in the early hours of the morning . All of this is strange only because no one tells any of our foreign neighbours that English people have a thousand unwritten rules that you have to absorb by osmosis over many years and that the English are deeply troubled by any behaviour that doesn't observe these rules that are so impossible to learn, even for the earnestly rule-following races that do alight here on the journey arc from peasanthood to Martha Stewart.
Some rules, like the rules of the road, have now vanished from the streets around north Peterborough. In most cases though I think that the insulation provided by a car breeds selfishness per se. And the various nationalities - be it four shaven Polish lads in a 1989 Passat with no rear suspension, the British-Asian princess in the Peugeot parked so that no one can get by, the Mirpuri wideboy rapping on his mobile in the blacked out Range Rover, or the family of nine Kurds in the Toyota Camry - are ignoring the existence of each other in their cars as assiduously as they try to do in their houses. This is the first step to assimilation because it is mostly what we try to do; ignore one another. The only exception is the previously mentioned British male magnanimity when driving. Many people think this is a weakness, but generously allowing someone to cut in is a way of commenting on their relative incompetence at the wheel next to your own.
A gang of boisterous starlings have taken up residence in the garden, feasting from the black bin bags next door and perching on the fence to argue vociferously with one another and to shit disdainfully when they hear a comment they don't like. They are the scruffy teenage thugs who will one day become a soaring smoky cloud, chomping early summer midges, undulating in massive columns and balls to confuse the sparrowhawks, and assembling in ever larger swarms before they flee to Eastern Europe. Although many do stay and many more will arrive in winter when the conditions in the East are even harsher than they are here. They might well have chosen another fence to sit on (not in a metaphorical sense; these fellows are extremely opinionated) but perhaps the contents of the black bin bags next door remind them of home. But their cacophony is the second element in an unholy trinity of noises that now beset the area. A satanic polish thrash metal band now practice in the back room of The Crown on Lincoln Road. They have a simple verse-chorus-verse style. The verses are plaintive angst-filled pleas for death to be swift and painless. The choruses are like the sound of a thousand demons bowels being emptied in an arctic windstorm. Quite catchy...
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