Coke cans of doom
I lived with an Italian guy for a couple of years. We rented a town house with a big bay window and a tiny front garden - literally 4 by 2 feet of gravel with a hedge. He was good fun, a hard working and personable dude who liked a drink and knew how to talk to the ladies. He was a man of the world, but a different world,so occasionally he would make endearing errors like stocking the fridge with Tennent's Super on the grounds that "in Italy, Tennents Scotch Ale is the best British beer you can buy, ah?!".

He was also the kind of guy who, if he saw work that needed doing, would willingly get stuck in without being asked. For example, one morning I took it upon myself to trim the unruly hedge out front and he soon appeared, sporting gloves and a rubbish bag, and offered to take care of the clippings.

As anyone who's tackled that particular task will tell you, it's almost impossible to get normal grade bin liners to hold a hedge clipping of any substance without being shredded so it took about 30 seconds for my mild-mannered accomplice to transform into ITALIAN RAGE MAN. "Va fanculo," he announced. "My balls are completely broken. I go now to the shop for a proper fucking bag, not this cazzo piece of shit." I carried on clipping, knowing when to keep my nose out, as the stylishly black leather jacket-clad figure stalked off to the corner store.

He returned presently, sporting some heavyweight garden sacks and the phone number of a girl he'd met along his 100 yard journey. Carrying on with the task at hand, he was happily filling the bag when my attention was again taken by an enraged yell.

"The fuck is this shit?"

"What's up, man?"

"Behind the small hedge. Is a fucking..." he leaned into the void between a small bush and the front wall of the house. "is fucking.. two hundred of empty Coke cans."

I descended the ladder, inspected the bush and found him to be completely correct. Some of them had clearly been there a while, judging by the rust, but it was undeniable: the space under the bush was completely filled with discarded fizzy drink cans.

"You know what piss me off? These are all the same. Is all Coke. No Tango, no Sprite. Is just Coke. Is one bastard who is doing this things."

He may be from the North of Italy but I recognised the look in his eye from the Godfather films. You can insult a man's choice of beer but you can't litter his garden. The disrespect, I could see, would not stand.

I convinced him that the cans were ancient history, and that the important thing was to clear the garden. But he was agitated for the rest of the day, and after work on Monday I found him fuming in the kitchen.

"You know what I found in the garden this evening, man?"

I held my breath.

"A FUCKING Coke can. This bloody bastard is still fucking with my garden."

Now, our hero here works in IT so it didn't take him long to come up with a plan. Within the hour we had a webcam pointing out of the living room window and recording the bush out front. The short USB cable meant his laptop was perched precariously on the TV stand but he bolstered it with a cushion and, satisfied, eventually calmed his nerves enough to retire for the evening.

The following evening he was home early to check the evidence. Nothing.

Wednesday he was out of town on business but rang me twice to make sure I'd checked the footage for evidence. I had, but saw nothing untoward.

On Thursday I came home, opened the front door and found him hunched over the laptop, his vengeful countenance lit only by the glow of the screen.

"Man."

"Yes mate."

"I have found the coolprit."

"Oh aye?"

"I don't understand."

He turned the laptop for me to see. The webcam had been taking one shot every five seconds, so there were only three frames of the crime being committed. In the first, there was just a foot visible, intruding into the front garden area. The second image was blurry, but obviously showed a figure leaning over the bush to place something into the space behind it. But final frame was the money shot; our phantom litterer had turned enough to reveal their face to the camera. It wasn't a belligerent chav, it wasn't a thoughtless kid, it wasn't a mentally unstable homeless guy tidying litter off the street. In fact, we both recognised the face.

It was the batty old woman next door.

We knew her by sight; I'd cut her lawn a couple of times and (I hoped) she would've just said if we were doing something to upset her. What the living shit she was sticking Coke cans behind our hedge for was a mystery.

Now, the thing about Italians is they're very proud, to the point where you can't cross them if you value your life, but they also value their family and friends above all else. I could actually see the confusion on his face - the nice old girl next door was clearly filed in a part of his mind that was completely incompatible with the embodification of pure evil that he had built his litterbug nemesis up to be.

Eventually, we decided to talk to the police. They'd be able to get her some help or something.

The generously proportioned officer at the station did agree to send someone round to have a chat and see if there was a problem. But, he said, we wouldn't be able to press charges since the littering occurred on private land (our garden) and thus was not technically a crime. Obviously we weren't going to go that far anyway, but an interesting tidbit for you there.

We returned home, somewhat mollified, and sure enough the Coke cans stopped appearing after that.

No more than a month later, however, I came home to find policemen in the neighbour's front garden.

"She died," said the WPC. "We're not suspecting foul play."

The house went to auction the following April, and in May the Italian and I moved out, he to Scotland and I into London. We never spoke about our elderly ex-neighbour again.

Lesson learned. You do not fuck with an Italian's hedge.
( pineapplecharm D d M Y, H:i, Thu 9 Jan 2014, 13:57, 5 replies)

tl;dr

( The Doveston haunted by the memory of his own amnesia, Thu 9 Jan 2014, 13:59, closed)

Click.
Good story.
(searlichek, Thu 9 Jan 2014, 14:15, closed)

Nice !
[click]

Disappointed that no horses heads were involved
(Carpe Cyprinidae, Thu 9 Jan 2014, 14:30, closed)

I can't be sure they weren't...

( pineapplecharm D d M Y, H:i, Thu 9 Jan 2014, 14:33, closed)

I watched a video of an Italian's bush, once.
Bunga bunga, I believe they say.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Thu 9 Jan 2014, 14:57, closed)