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Tuesday 28 October 2008

There's an arsonist on my stoep.


I have blogged about the town that I live in quite a few times before. It is a lovely little town. I am quite fond of it. However I really do live on the wrong side of the tracks.

I can put up with the pavements being smeared with poo on a daily basis. I shit you not. I just watch where I walk very carefully. I have learned to live with the fact that I live on a road that is the main artery for the world's drunken people. I am able to live with the nightly singing-shouting-screaming-swearing-puking-drumming-(yes drumming)-smashing-punching noises because I have trained myself to sleep through (almost) anything. It took a while.

I can tolerate the fact that I live across the road from a pub run by the Portuguese mafia. I know that the owner is part of the mafia because he said so to some English guy asking for a job, right outside my window. "I am the mafia". You can't make this shit up. He used to hold one man Portuguese- and Russian-techno parties in his flat until 5am, but the noise police eventually put a stop to that. What a shame.

I tolerated my drug addicted, bike thieving neighbour. He moved onto robbing shops when his girlfriend fell pregnant. But this did not seem to be a good career move for him because he ended up in jail 3 times, including while she had the baby. They had spectacular fights most nights. She punched their window. Blood was smeared all over the walls of our block for days. She did it a second time. Blood again. This time they did not replace the window and put up a black plastic bag all through the winter. Eventually she left and he ended up in jail and his flat was sold. 

But. A while ago G told me that someone had been pooing regularly on one of the stairwells in our block. There have recently been further developments regarding this... pooer of bad deeds. It turns out this mystery person is living on this flight of stairs. The flight of stairs is his. Guess what, he is also a druggie and a thief. 

The other day some people from the floor above had the gall to use his stairs and asked him what the hell he was doing there, apart from smoking crack. He told them he lived there. They told him they were calling the police. He told them if they did he would set fire to the building. They called the police. He set fire to the building. I saw the firetrucks, and the charred mess in the stairwell, but I only found out the full story about the guy this week.

I have an arsonist living in my stairwell. An arsonist who smokes crack and poos in my stairwell. Fan-fucking-tastic is all I can say.

This disturbs me. All that other stuff was peanuts. This guy can burn us all to death if he wants. I object.

I am going to say it again because I like the sound:  we really really really really should move. I have said it before. I have lived here three years and thought I was immune. But it is all getting a bit too mad.

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

Move, seriously.

Although it was nothing compared to your arsonist crackhead pooer, I endured almost a year of utter hell in my old flat in Gardens.

In my first few weeks I had to fumigate twice for bed bugs (not before I had been bitten to shit and almost driven crazy), then the noise made itself heard... I'm talking about full-blown shabeen bashes in the bachelor flat next door to me, starting (yes, starting) at 4am and ending in the mid-morning with people having thrown up in the hallway and outside. Wonderful stuff indeed.

Added to that was a creepy old man next door, shit management, screaming matches in the early hours when neibours tried to complain about the noise... it was hell. My cats were a wreck and so was I.

Now I live in a great block, and aside from noisy Italians upstairs who sometimes have parties (which always end early) it's calm and peaceful, and the area is way cooler too.

Unknown said...

You said it - you really really really really really need to move! God, I don't know how you've even managed up till now!

Anonymous said...

Wow. I third the comments. Move. You never know when said druggie will need money for his next hit and you could be robbed or something! That's so scary!

Janine / Being Brazen said...

Moving seems like a rather good option for you right now...unless you like the smell of poo, crack and madness in the morning ;)

Start looking for a new flat today.

po said...

Rox: that situation sounds rather similar to mine, pretty awful!

kittycat and BB: yeah, we should move, but seeing as I havent found a job yet, we were going to wait til I found one so we could decide where to move to, like another part of town or another town altogether.

sleepyjane: that is a good point! But he may not rob us because we know where he lives! But the shops below our flats were robbed this weekend.

Kim said...

On No Po - Yup it is time to move. I know it is a bit of a pain in the backside - but you will be much happier elsewhere!

Cam said...

PO...move back to SA. It's 30'C in Cape Town!! Unbelievable!

po said...

dt: am considering it. Another problem is that I am considering moving country...

ches: am considering it.

j said...

Geezus Kryste! I thought my crazy story of my alcoholic neighbor dying on my sidewalk while his crackhead girlfriend tried to break into my apartment was bad. You could move, but how fun could a safe neighborhood possibly be?

po said...

J: hold the phone! your story sounds way more interesting than mine!


You are right though, we used to live in this village cut of from the world where nothing NOTHING happened. So far I prefer this insanity but I prefer to not be burned to death too!

Miss Caught Up said...

Wow! I'd move... It doesn't sound pleasant at all.

6000 said...

COuld be worse. You could live in Stoke.
In many ways, Leamington is like an SA city: a vast difference in price, but not in geographical distance between the have's and have-not's.

I would, as several other readers have suggested, move.

po said...

6000: agreed. I feel I have learned something about English culture that you do not realise in SA; people here have a tough time too. My parents live in Stevenage, a tough town as well, and the things I have heard there shock me.

Miss caught up: considering it.

po said...

P.S it is only South Leam that is like this, the North is lovely, but super posh, and I am thinking us dodgy Saffas will never be able to afford it, there is always Coventry... hahahahahahaha, something tells me Coventry will make South Leam seem like Utopia!

Anonymous said...

Amazing to hear that! And there I was thinking that Leam Spa was a lovely little English villagey -type town...

Moving seems like a good choice given the alternative.. but then it's not easy, costs money and how can you be sure that the next place will be any better?

Dash said...

there's no way of spinning that that's not just arse. Fuck me, move.

Anonymous said...

nah, i say stay! that way you have plenty of material for that book/screenplay/novel.
NOT!
seriously, i don't know how you stand it! though then again, i heard on the news while i was driving home tonight, a guy shot and killed a 4 year old by accident in my neighbourhood, while shooting after a fleeing cellphone thief!
eish!
i recommend you move to topanga. i really do. i recommend i do, too.

po said...

hiya sass, wow i think bad stuff can happen anywhere, but Topanga sounds amazing, do you think they will give me a visa?

Tamara said...

Wow... my neighbours suddenly don't seem so bad. Except the child-abusing ones.

po said...

tamara: what is it with all these crazy neighbours? No wonder they could write a whole soap about neighbours.

Anonymous said...

Wow, if my crazy housemate were to become homeless, she could take up residence in your stairwell. She routinely tries to burn the house down by cooking empty pots, and this summer she was down with pooping on paper towels and tossing them away in ziplock baggies (long story)... She would be a definite improvement in your neighborhood. (She's also VERY hard of hearing so her sleep would be largely unaffected.)

po said...

Hi S: um, please dont send your housemate this way! Where do you live?

That ziploc story sounds a good one? you willing to share?

po said...

I met the arsonist! on the street. He asked us for 30p. I said no. Call me a bitch but that's what you get for pooing on my steps.