The final instalment, for now, of my neighbour’s unreasonable angstiness with me and my son in this rather strange time we are inhabiting, Mr Fandango and Ragtag community working together to form a solid team.

5 times 7 is 35; thats 5 weeks since official lockdown, which is when the pubs shut.

2 days, maybe 3 have elapsed since I discovered I had a puncture, despite not really going anywhere. This happened after my son kicked another ball over my neighbour’s fence; one too many it seems because it broke the camels back and I was confronted by an angry red face bare chested man standing on his coal bunker shouting at me over the fence, like he had really long legs or was on (in?) stilts. This all happened at the weekend, forgive me if I don’t tell you if it was a bank holiday, but really nothing seems to matter any more, the calendar on the wall gives me a visual representation of where we should be, but all I see is way into the future where we are all living under water with gills and everything, evolution its time to really step up the pace. The end of April has as much relevance as Nigel Farage has, theres no one he can stand next to and be overtly racist, or having a bit of banter as he may call it.

Anyway, time is passing, no one knows where to, it doesn’t matter, people are buying things on the internet and forgetting what they’ve bought until they turn up and then its, “Aha, I know what this is” and then it isn’t; its an obscure Cocteau Twins gatefold and not the new Home Current album, the first to be pressed on a new record label, will be worth millions.

Anyway my neighbour of 17 years, with whom I got on really well, flipped at the weekend, the lockdown became too much and he lost it. Shouting at me, covering his tyres with carpet and I get a puncture despite the lack of travel for anything except for  essentials, such as oils, the selection and beer. The night after I discovered I had a puncture, I went to bed at a normal kind of time, midnight, did my business and got into bed. Up and to the west was a ceiling light sprite, not moving, a rectangular type which has never been there before. A light sprite is a reflection from light sources, can be as little as the reflection from a watch face or a sweeping lighthouse beam. My dog, Benny, goes mental when he sees these, its fun to a certain degree, but then becomes tedious when he spends all day in a state of perpetual alert crouching in the gravel out side waiting for a breeze to move the patio doors and thus release the light sprites dancing along the wall prompting him to dive headfirst into the wall to try and catch them, he never will. Anyway there was a light sprite in our bedroom and the reason I mention it was that it was never there before, but tired as I was after a day of not really doing  much I just nodded off. 4am I awoke, needing a wee, the light sprite still there, and through the skylight a slither of white light. Tumbling out of bed, taking care not to wake Mrs T, I bumped towards the bathroom and gave myself the luxury of a lazy wee; thats sitting down chaps, go on spoil yourselves. I didn’t turn on the lights because it was like being in Tescos in my bathroom, this intense crazy white light was really burning through the windows, like a close encounter. I finished my wee and opened the window, sitting down on the shelf to see what the hell was going on. Turns out Arthur’s security light (my neighbour, this is usually anonymous this blog but i’m aggrieved and so will name and shame) was pointed upwards and directly at my house, come to think of it he may have projected a massive cock onto the front of my house. I’ll never know, it wasn’t going out, there was a meteor shower but it was like being in Hong Kong, the amount of light that was issuing into the night sky would have made it impossible to see any stars for aircraft. There are no aircraft, and I doubt anyone saw what was written in lights on my house as the only people driving by are front line workers who are probably so exhausted they’re in a state of perpetual sleep, and farmers; theres a lot of farm action these days I’ve noticed, loads of it, no idea why, all off to blow their horn or somebody else’s in a haystack I should expect. Anyway the light stayed on, the light sprite stayed until morning and when I woke up at 8am (late, due to light pollution) the sprite was gone. It hasn’t happened again, theres very little movement from on the other side of the fence aside from the usual fucking about with wood pellets, which he uses in his boiler. Which always happens really late at night, around midnight and its really close so we hear it, a lot. But we don’t complain about all the shovelling and scraping, crack on Arthur.

Was there a giant cock projected onto the front of our house? I’d like to think there probably was but I doubt there was because of Arthur’s lack of imagination, like Nigel Farage, theres no excuse for him to get out and shout at foreigners anymore, so the young are the next target (i’m 48 which isn’t as young as i’d like to think it is).