The art of living in a crime zone without shitting yourself

This week I report to you from behind the metal shutters that now adorn our windows and the barricade that we have built up behind our front door.  It is day six of the siege that began shortly after our road became the most crime-ridden street in the district….. Thanks Paul.  To think how safe we felt until you showed us the “reality” that is the – ‘Crime and policing website…..”

Knock, knock

“Sorry, excuse me everyone…”

Me - “Hello, who is it?”

NWC - “Hi, it’s your neighbourhood watch co-ordinator”

Me - “Wow, You’ve risked crossing the road, are you alright, not been mugged or anything…?”

NWC - “It’s about that actually…. and for the record I didn’t knock, this is an email…so that knocking should have been a sort of "boinging" noise, telling you that you have new mail…”

Me – “So, can’I make you a cup of tea or anything?”  (Sorry I’m English it’s what we do….I don’t even like the stuff… but you have to offer.)

NWC – “No thanks.  Besides I’ve told you this is an email not a conversation and I’m just informing you that….”

Me – “So why exactly is this in the form of a conversation?”

NWC – “That’s a bit of blogger's licence for you and anyway why are you asking me?  It’s your blog.”

Me – “Oh, yeah so it is….. get on with it then, some of us are trying to write a blog here…”

The Email from NWC informed me that our road isn’t actually a war zone and the horrendous report on the Crime and policing website about our street is actually down to a statistical error….

Apparently when the “Crime and policing” site was first setup, crimes were registered against where they were reported i.e. the local police stations.  This meant that when the local police looked on the web site they found themselves living in a crime zone (even worse than our street apparently).  The estimate of the value of the police stations had fallen through the floor - not even Policemen want to live in crime hot spots,  so they decided to change the reporting methods.

The report is now compiled based on where the reporter of the crime is calling from and so the figures for our street included:-

·         A man who reported his sister being beaten up.  She actually lives in a different town

·         A 999 call made in error from a child's mobile phone

·         Umpteen calls from my friend Paul wanting to boost the crime figures for our road

So it turns out our damned neighbours are all goody goodies and it is merely their vigilance and  superior citizenship that is sending our house prices spiralling down into oblivion.

I sent the following response  to our neighbourhood watch co-ordinator (I’ve removed our road name to protect the innocent….)

Thank god for that, we have been barricaded in our house* since our friends, from that den of Iiiquity (AKA Millers Close), reported, with a bit too much relish for my liking ,  that we were living in Britain’s worst  hit  crime road.  I must admit that I’m impressed with the local council and the fantastic job it has done removing the burning vehicles, dead bodies, prostitutes and drug dealers from our road before anyone even noticed…..Perhaps they have been a bit over zealous though as they seem to have removed most signs of life as well or is it just that we are all busy indoors reporting crime from around the county, country, world ?

* Only venturing out to commit various crimes in the surrounding roads, in a valiant attempt to disguise the figures and make our obviously riot-torn road look more acceptable.

After reading through the problems associated with reporting crime (I’ve heard that we are only a couple of reports short of getting our own major ITV  series “Hertfordshire’s  real life ghetto….”)  you can understand that I’m reluctant to report the following suspicious characters seen hanging around recently.

Now don't tell me these don't look like trouble

Then I thought to myself t"To hell with the house prices I feel it is my civic duty..."

Yours from across the  war zone that is our “Look both ways before you cross and don’t forget your stab vest” street….

What I can’t quite get my head around is why the police don’t record the crimes against the location where they actually occur…..

A shitty drive

If you ever hear anyone claim they have had a really shitty drive I can inform you they have not, not even close…..

·         A couple of extra hours behind the wheel?  That’s nothing

·         Cut up by some arsehole?  Get over it

·         Run off the road by some nutter….?  OK that’s pretty shitty but still not in the same league as…..

Getting into your car for a 10 minute journey, imagine you are feeling fine - you have just been to the cinema and seen a really good film, “Paul”:  I can highly recommended it.....

.....when, 5 minutes into the journey, you get a sudden excruciating stomach cramp, followed a fraction of a second later by a violent expulsion….What the….? Not even time to think "Wow I need to get to a toilet.….."  I did have these thoughts though:

·         Oh my god I better not crash, that would take some explaining….”No I didn’t shit myself because of the accident….Give me a polygraph if you don’t believe me”

·         If I end up in hospital does it count if I tell them that I started out with clean underwear??? Despite all evidence to the contrary…

·         I’m glad that I’m not wearing shorts, they would never have contained this mother lode….

·         I wonder if this will end up looking like tan on my legs?**

·         Hope Mrs B has not got home yet….(unfortunately she had)

·         What do I say if I get stopped for speeding – other than “No officer I think it would be better if I did not get out of the car….”

·         How bad would it have been if this had happened in the cinema?  Now that would have been the walk/shamble/shuffle of shame, as I tried to squelch on out of there….I guess I could have attempted to claim the film had scared the shit out of me…but I probably would not have got away with it, “Paul” is a comedy after all…..

·         Just as well my friend Ash and I were in separate cars….

I managed to make it home, despite some additional squelchy aftershocks and spent the next 24 hours hosing myself down in the shower. With just the loss of a once perfectly good pair of underwear, my trousers and my dignity to keep me company.  

Mrs B helpfully stood at arm’s length with one hand clamped over her nose, proffering bags for ex-clothing through a crack in the bathroom door…..This was one shit that certainly didn’t come up smelling of roses….

So like I say, next time you claim to have had the shittest journey ever, I think I can give you  the runs  a run for your money 

For the record Mrs B didn’t want to touch this part of the blog even with an extendable loo brush….

** Coincidently LilPixie covered tanning in her post this week but for some inexplicable  reason didn’t cover "The car and trouser tanning technique – for those who want a bottom half tan only (patent pending)"….. You should go and check out her blog, It's a lollipop world, I think it’s really funny (let’s hope that it is meant to be and I’ve not misinterpreted a serious blog.  It wouldn’t be the first time. I mean how was I to know that “Floaters” was not  hilarious stories about unflushables, rather than the sad story about people who drowned …..)  

In a desperate attempt to get something positive out of this experience…..

A couple of days before “The event” I had deposited a huge steaming turd of an aside made the following remark  on LilPixie's tanning blog.  I had been worried it would remain hidden in the depth of her comments section. However this seems like an ideal opportunity to flush it to the surface….  

I'm happy being a pale English Rose and have used a towel factor 5*** since I was a teenager.

*** 5 Towels covering my body at all times - even when in the shade - you can never be too careful..

I do find it hilarious when people turn orange for the sake of “looking good” (snigger, snigger, snort, like a small child on a sugar and E number overdose) you can do that by just eating carrots****, although not as safely as you might think. Huge amounts of carrot eating will lead to you developing an orangey colour to your skin and even the whites of the eyes may turn orange. The palms of the hands and the soles of feet can also become carrot coloured in serious cases. At this stage if you carry on eating those evil carrots, you will most likely die of carotene poisoning…

On the plus side if you go for an open casket funeral you will at least have a “healthy” orange glow…probably enough not to require additional lighting in the chapel of rest or would the service be better held in a greenhouse?

**** Makes you wonder if the Hulk was suffering from a green vegetable overdose - I know that being forced to eat just a few vegetables, as a kid, certainly made me mad, so who knows what might happen if someone forced me to eat a lot now?

Fortunately I don’t own a pair of ripped purple shorts so we will never know….

Hang on a second, I don’t think Dr Banner did either ….

Unsolved mysteries of the world… just where did the Hulk's purple shorts come from?? Was he being forced to eat some aubergine along with those greens???

Lilpixie likes to reply to all comments - a girl after my own heart.  If someone has taken the trouble to make a comment they deserve a response….

Lilpixie  - A tragic oompa loompa death by carrots. Who knew...

Me - I’m not sure I would describe any Oompa Loompa death as tragic, more like a result….

Lilpixie  -You know it's funny you said "aubergine". My best friend is from England & she came to visit me this summer & educated me on the European eggplant. I can't remember what ya'll call the zucchini over there now. Corgettes, am I correct? (Those are really cooler names than we have.)

Me - You are correct on the Courgettes front, yucky horrible things… I think the cool name thing is probably down to unfamiliarity…although even I have to go with Aubergine over Egg plant any day of the week…. Funny how Pulp Fiction did comparisons with fast-food rather than vegetables

Lilpixie - So, the Hulk was made out of Spinach? Where the hell have I been? I would have been watching my intake by now, before I turned into swamp thing at the dinner table.

Me - I’m way ahead of you and have been restricting my green intake for years, until now I just didn’t know why….Thank you gut feeling you saved me from a lifetime of anger management therapy and having to maintain a green co-ordinated wardrobe..

Lilpixie - Haha. You're awesome!! I love long, humorous comments!

Me - Thanks for posting a blog to get my teeth into. You may wish to retract the awesome comment once you have read next week’s BlackLOG, possibly way too much sharing even for me….

Lilpixie  - The Hulk was more than likely growing eggplants in his shorts, or is half made of eggplant. You learn something new everyday.

Me - I guess he probably had something growing down there, I’m just way too English (i.e infuriatingly polite) to speculate about it. As for learning something new every day, I try not to. At my age, with so many brain cells already confined to history’s wastepaper basket, I have enough difficulty remembering my own name let alone anything new….

Show me the Sunny (a rebranding of Energy Watch)

It was going to be “Show me the money,” but I thought that was a bit mercenary…. Besides I was frightened Jerry Maguire might sue for infringement of copyright ….

Monitoring our way to a fortune (or not) with our Solar Panels

KW Produced so far - 264

This has earned us approximately – £113 so far

KW generated in the week – 41

I discovered this week that the average sunshine for the UK should be 175 hours, in the period that we have had our solar panels but this year it has been only 125 hours….that is a whopping decline of around 29%.  Sorry Britain my bad, I guess putting up Solar panels is the equivalent of going out without an umbrella, which makes it 99.999% certain that it will rain…..Hang on a second, we live in Britain - it’s already 99.998%  certain it will rain, I shouldn’t be crucified for an extra .001% should I?

Show me the Sunny -

our way to a fortune or is it 

how to turn a large fortune

into a small one.... 

Record of the week

We got to get out of this place  by the The animals

Shit creek by Icicle works

Accidents will happen by Elvis Costelo

Photo finish

Many of you will be relieved that there are no pictures of "The incident"

I must admit that I’m impressed with the local

council and the fantastic job it has done removing

 the burning vehicles, dead bodies, prostitutes

and drug dealers from our road before

anyone even noticed…..

The metal shutters and the barricades

have been removed. We are just relieved 

that we can go back to living the peaceful

existence that we always thought that

we were living….

Tune in next week for some exercise Nazi’s, me upsetting other bloggers and an irate Mrs B (see the exercise Nazis) has a pop at the blind (we should be OK as long as the BlackLOG is not translated into Braille or anything that can be read by a Golden Retriever….….)