Raddled

I am up early this morning. Well, I'm up early most mornings because if I dawdle, the hens kick off and stamp on any eggs they may have inadvertently laid over night, and then I have sticky- egg-mess clearing duties to add to all the other first-thing-in-the-morning malarkey that goes on here.

But the reason I am up really early this morning is because I got about three hours sleep last night because some people in our road decided to have a slanging match in the wee small hours, and because it was stifling hot we had all the upstairs windows open so heard every effing word.

And yes there was a lot of swearing. One man's girlfriend wouldn't let him back into the flat (the house I am talking about has been divided into two 'flatlets' which is ridiculous because if you ask me, that couple need as much space to get away from each other as possible) because he was effing drunk. Then his effing interfering neighbour, who lives in the other flatlet, came out and said the reason his effing girlfriend wasn't letting him in was because he was behaving like an effing c*** and if he was to shut the eff up she'd let him effing in and they'd all be able to get some effing sleep. Oh, and if he didn't effing shut up, he'd make him effing shut up because he'd got to go to effing work in the morning, unlike some effing people.

Well quite, I thought. And as it was all getting louder and more heated and phrases like' beat you up', ' knock your effing lights out' and 'shut up you b******, you know nothing about my effing life' were making their way into the equation, I dragged myself, bleary eyed to the phone and called the police.

Well, I can only think the police had put on extra patrols to cope with the wild celebrations of England getting through to the next round of the World Cup (ahahahahahahahahahahaaaa!!!) because, I kid you not, within three minutes of my call, two squad cars arrived, one from either end of the street, as thought they had been having a competition to see who could get there first.

Of course, about a minute after I'd made the call, everything went quiet on the effing front. Typical, I thought, so I hung around downstairs in my jimjams in case the police wanted to arrest me for wasting their time. Luckily, the police knew exactly which house to go to, and there was a lengthy discussion with much flashing of torches about 'what's been going on here then?' and 'it's okay, officer. Bit of a contretemps, don't you know, but we're all hunky dory now.'

After fifteen minutes, everyone went away. Needless to say, I couldn't get back to sleep and now have huge bags under my eyes to show for it.

Yesterday, Andy and I were out and about in the bottom end of the county of Kent, We travelled through some very pretty villages and surrounding areas, untouched by the concrete hand of John Prescott. So, of course, when we got home, we were on the interwebbly looking at property prices in those areas and being pleasantly surprised that we could make a move there if we so wanted to.

Now what I want to know is this - do you get effing ruckuses/ ruckusi in the middle of the night in these lovely little villages? And if you do, do the police get there within 3 minutes to sort them out?

A series of unfortunate events...

I don't know quite what Andy and I have done to upset the powers-that-be but a series of unfortunate events on Friday, Saturday and Sunday meant our weekend was not the calm and stress-free event it should have been. This morning, as we zombied our way around the kitchen trying to get Monday started, you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd walked onto the set of 'The Haggard and Raddled Show.' (I'll let you decide who is who but I'm going to need some serious help from the old under-eye anti-wrinkle cream if I'm to go out in public and not frighten small children. And I'm fully expecting Andy to arrive home from work this evening with a dog stapled to his hand - this does happen sometimes when he is tired.)

None of the events were anyone's faults particularly, except the one involving a friendship issue in which my daughter was on the receiving end of what I can only describe a vicious, unfair and unsocial hours diatribe from her next-door neighbour. As I sat on the landing in the wee small hours (what is it with me and traumas on the landing at the moment?) trying to placate my child (who was having trouble breathing) and say the right things, all I really wanted to do was to get in the car and go and 'sort it aht' a la Eastenders style i.e yell in this woman's face and ask her how she liked it (and then probably punch her for good measure and blame it on PMT), but after I'd relayed the problem to Andy and he'd hidden the car keys, he said I'd done the right thing by staying calm and in control and this 'person' was probably only jealous of Heather's forthcoming trip to Scarborough as, and I quote, 'Scarborough is the Mecca for those who come from Yorkshire.' And Andy should know, coming from 'oop t'north' himself.

Other things happened that I shan't go into detail over but involved a sick dog, a sick cat, a sick me, a magazine subscription, a lorry that keeps parking across our driveway, an insurance policy, some rhubarb, more book rejections, contretemps at Andy's workplace and a minor fracas over the situation of a compost bin. Coupled with the fact there was bog all on the telly to distract us, it was a pretty pants weekend all around.

In fact, the only good things were the sausage sandwiches we had for tea last night and that Chris remembered Mother's Day without prompting.

So what will this week bring? I dread to think. The weather is being weird (sun, wind, hot, cold, overcast, frost, plague of frogs) and I've got to catch Mrs Pumphrey at some point today as her pink pants are slowly expanding and both she and Mrs Slocombe need spraying with anti-peck spray before the new look in short feathers goes a step too far beyond what can be deemed fashionable in this season's chicken wear. Mrs Pumhrey, for all her calm demeanour when she's roosting and dozing on the back of the garden bench, can be remarkable flighty and is the most difficult of the girls to catch hold of. I may need to buy a net. Or a copy of 'Hello' magazine. She likes a trite read with her capuccino and Hobnob.

And in a crazy moment last week I said I'd help the daughter of a friend of mine with her A level Shakespeare essay on Macbeth and Anthony and Cleopatra. She's got to compare and contrast the two female lead characters, Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra, powerful women both but with huge psychological flaws (i.e they were both nuts) which ultimately governed their Fate. Perhaps they'd had bad weekends too. And PMT. Nice hair, though, Cleo.

At least I didn't incite anyone to murder. But I'd better keep an eye on my poison asp, just in case.