Soap Opera Street
It started out so well, a young family moving into their first proper home in a quiet, friendly street in an extremely good area.

It ended up with my hiding in the house in despair, head in hands and windows shuttered as crazed knifemen on remand set fire to cars in the adjoining driveway, as teenagers went berserk on drugs and barricaded themselves into their loft and tried to throw the policemen from the roof, as bitchiness and gossip led to marriages breaking down and seed of all kind was scattered from house to house...

I moved recently, just days before a young girl was robbed and gangraped round the corner, as the rapists used her mobile to call her mother and tell her what they were doing.

I don't know if it was Gemma's nightly filling-rattling primal grunts as she was rutted by random cab drivers when I had guests in followed by days of listening to her scream horrific abuse at her kids from early am (walls like tissue paper, too), or the constant threat of imminent death due to the grudge held on Lorraine that pushed me out in the end.

I do know that I adore my new neighbour. She's a Jehovah's Witness.
(posthumous mince is tiptoeing through the tulips, Thu 1 Sep 2005, 23:44, Reply)