Our new neighbours will soon be neighbours no more: having bought the little shack at # 33 Sproxton Lane in June 2011 for $950,000 and the adjoining vacant block in January 2012 for $750,000, and having built a huge green wall around it, it's all up for graps again - for $965,000 and $765,000 respectively!
I assured our new neighbours at the time that, having lived with the Berlin Wall for the first twenty years of my life, I'd have no problem living with their wall for the last twenty but some neighbours objected strongly to it. They complained to the local Council who have called for a development application to decide if the fence can stay up or come down. Had that something to do with their decision to sell again?
To make them feel better, I told them that our other neighbours had given us the inverted Victory-sign for years - he to me, and his wife to my wife - as well as leaving anonymous notes in our mailbox in which they called us 'unAustralian'. I guess, by their definition anybody who has worked hard all their lives and paid their taxes and doesn't live on hand-outs from the Government is 'unAustralian' which makes us very 'unAustralian' - and proud of it! The human race really hasn't evolved much since it first emerged from the primordial slime.
In my idle hours - of which there are twenty-four in every day - I sometimes amuse myself with Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary which defines 'neighbour' as 'One whom we are commanded to love as ourselves, and who does all he knows how to make us disobedient'.
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