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.
