Garden War

My neighbour turned up unannounced today, I was wearing my decorating leggings and a sweaty t-shirt the whole house was in a mess, I was on the phone, interrupted from painting the kitchen floor the colour of bright clean tiles (don't ask).

Thinking foolishly that he had come round for reasons of positive neighbourly exchange (why would I think that, it hasn't happened in 15 years of living in France) I invited him in and opened my heart and home to him,  but soon discovered the reason for his visit:  yet another request to kill something in our garden.  We have already killed and hacked back a large number of things at his request,  but he will not be satisfied until the whole garden is rased to the ground.    He claims to be ecological, but he is a hater of nature, his intensively farmed bare brown earth vegetable plot with chicken coop green metal wire fencing fools nobody.

When he started to undermine my cherry tree I felt  the pin falling from my internal grenade, there was nothing I could do about it, great ever-mounting swathes of rage roared up to my explosive limit, could he not notice it?  When he started stating the law about how many centimetres from the fence you are allowed to plant bushes and trees, and pointing out that trees have roots, the grenade blew.  I warned him to get out, but he persisted in trying to reason with me, so he got blasted with every resentement I've built up since 1997  at least 20 of them justifyably applied to him and his wife, and ended up in tears of impotent rage.

He now thinks, quite rightly, that I am a mad English perimenopausal woman,  but he also thinks he can negotiate with JC instead as he is a man and a Frenchman at that.   Little does he know.  When I told JC his reaction was:   he is going to dig a pond called Malaria creek, right next to their terrace,  play football up the side of their house, move the trampoline in front of their patio doors,  fill an ENORMOUS garden spray gun with Monsanto's finest cocktail, stand up against his hideous bare chicken fence, point it at his tomatoes and growl  MAKE MY DAY - all of these behaviours, as JC points out, are not actually illegal.  My response is masochistic.  The Garden Slaughterer is already booked and will arrive one morning early and wake them with the death whine of his chainsaw, until no plant is left standing and he looks out on a nomansland.   I will be inside with the windows shut, weeping in agony.

All this makes me understand the survey of French people on how they viewed their neighbours.    The most popular response was that a good neighbour is one you never see at all.