My mind has been mulling over the subject of neighbours of
late, which seems especially appropriate in this festive season of goodwill to
all mankind and suchlike. First of all,
my attention was brought to the Instagram account Neighbours From Hell which has
amused me if not for many hours, then at least several minutes. Secondly, we
had our first apartment block neighbours meeting last week which I attended and
met many of my neighbours for the first time. But perhaps most pertinently to
this subject matter, it appears my neighbourly nemesis has returned….
To explain this a little, I must backtrack back in time to
pre Sophington Towers blogging era, back to a time of my hedonistic youth, of
wild parties, fun times and flat sharing. Those were good days with far more
ups (see afore mentioned wild parties) than downs. Downs included the usual
flat sharing gripes, never enough loo roll when you need it, cheese thievery, and
waking up in the middle of the night to find your flatmate has invited half the
pub back to yours for an informal party, for which the toilet queue is
beginning right outside your bedroom door. But the biggest downer of all had to
be that of the secret bag slinger. My nemesis.
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| Guilty as charged Classic knotted blue baggery |
For about 12 months, each day would dawn with the optimism
of what a new day could bring, and unfortunately about three times a week this
optimism would be accompanied by a plastic bag of disgustingess, oft found on
our garden lawn. It was a deposit that varied with every drop off, sometimes a
dirty nappy, sometimes a viscous meaty substance which one could only liken to
the contents of a beef & ale pie (but more stinky) and occasionally, just
to keep us on our toes I think, vomit, which charmingly splattered all over the
inside of our garden fence. It was like a murder scene blood splatter, except
with vomit. However one thing these deposits
all had in common was that they were invariably sealed in a knotted blue
plastic bag, lobbed from the hands of one of our neighbours. Nice eh? These bag
bombs intrigued both myself & my fellow 4 flatmates.... and not in a good way. Putting to one side that a particularly well aimed shot had taken
out the seedlings we were trying to grow to spruce up the garden, these bags were
also frankly disgusting. Who would do that we thought to ourselves? And this
was where the real game began.
My flatmates and I plotted, we schemed, we investigated
contents, and we planned trajectories all in an attempt to figure out just
which disgusting fellow neighbor was the culprit. Well, I say we, it was mostly
I to be fair. We discussed with our neighbours that we actually knew, and
discovered that we were not the only victims of such bin lobbery. Based upon
trajectories and contents, we eliminated suspects, deducing it was unlikely to
be anyone to the right (which ruled out both the caterwauling karaoke-ists on a
diagonal right to the garden as well as the woman who hated us next door). It
was someone with a baby (hence the nappies, unless the guilty party was prone
not only to a spot of bag throwing but also bin raiding) and it wasn’t the
squatters to the left as they had also fallen foul of the catapulting criminals
in question.
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| Could these guys be the culprits? Not as innocent as they seem perhaps... |
But all our investigations proved fruitless, we had no idea
who it was who could be committing these acts of devious bin flinging. It was
time to call in the big guns… The police community officers. OK, not quite the
big guns, more the small water pistols of the investigatory world, but we were
living in a flat share for gods sake. We couldn’t afford the services of the
otter himself, Benedict Bandersnatch, so the local PCSOs would have to do. They
prodded contents with a stick and studied our trajectory map, but alas were as
equally at a loss as we were. Then suddenly, joy of joys, one day it stopped,
never to be seen again…. until last week when my former flatmate texted me to
let me know ole blue bags was back.
So, in a festive spirit of helping out all of mankind, I am
calling upon you reader, to help identify the perpetrators. All amateur sleuths
out there unite! This could be the next big mystery, up there with Sherlock’s
Reichenbach Falls cliffhanger. Unlikely, but y’know, aim high & that. Even though now six years on, I've moved out, it’s
time to catch the Stoke Newington slinger, the bag bomber of N16 and put their dastardly
exploits at an end. All answers on a
postcard please, and failing that in the comments section below.
A handy map to aid your investigations
Key
1 - Our House
2 - Vomit explosion on right hand fence
3 - Squatters
4 - Karaoke caterwaulers
X marks the spot where the bags usually landed
