So, I decided to start running outdoors again. Yeah, I know: been there, done that, got the washed-out Nike t-shirt (actually it’s a tank top, but whatever) to prove it.

If you’ve been reading this blog since God was a teenager, however, you’ll know that I don’t tend to have much luck with running outdoors. Or even just being outdoors. In fact, it wouldn’t be wrong to say my last experiment in this area was a complete and utter failure. You see, I was afeared. I was scared in that way that I think most women are when they find themselves out in the middle of nowhere, on their own and with no-one to hear them scream should something bad happen. “What if someone tries to kill me?” I would think, as I plodded up some lonely woodland trail or other. “I bet they wouldn’t find my body for YEARS out here!” And so the fear drove me away from those pretty woodland trails and towards the streets near my house, around which I would circle endlessly, passing the same, suburban scenes over and over and over again, seeing the same people multiple times, and getting the same looks of shocked disbelief from them every single time. (If someone’s running in this town, it normally means the police are after them…)

This got very boring, very quickly. Eventually, it got SO boring that I headed back to the gym, and the treadmill. At least people don’t stop what they’re doing to stare at you on the treadmill, you know? Well, not ALL the time, anyway.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind the treadmill. It’s my “thinking” time. And sometimes it’s my “not thinking” time, where I just put on some good music and let my mind go blank. Or blanker than usual. Other times, though, it’s my “Damn, but this is BORING!” time, and when that started to be the case more often than not, my mind once again turned towards the idea of running outdoors.

This time would be different, I thought. This time I would not be afraid. I would run where I wanted to run, and I would ignore the incredulous stares. It would be ace!

So, one fine day in July (it was literally the ONE fine day in July, seriously), I pulled on my running shoes and headed out into the great outdoors. What could go wrong, I thought? I had a phone with GPS on it. If I got lost, all I had to do was pull up a map, and I’d be found. (Also, it’s a PHONE. That you can use to speak to people on). And if someone tried to kill me, why, I was a RUNNER! I would RUN AWAY. Fast. Or I would poke them in the eye with my keys. It would be fine!

And actually, it was fine. Our town didn’t really exist before the 1960s. It was one of the “new towns” that were built in Scotland around then, and it has a very 1960s look to it: lots of concrete, buildings like boxes, strange bits of “street art” that have long-since become so thickly coated with graffiti that they’ve actually started to look better than they originally did, in that grim, urban kind of way. There is, however, also a river, and the area around the river is rather lovely. Lots of woodland trails that make you feel like you’re out in the country, even although you’re smack-dab in the centre of town, water rushing, birds chirping, flowers, er, flowering… I even saw a group of bunnies, people, and what could be better than that? (Oh, and every now and then, dotted in amongst the foliage, will be some graffiti-coated concrete edifice from the 60s. It’s awesome, seriously.)

Well, I finished my run, and I LOVED it. I actually don’t know this town very well, or not on foot, anyway. In the car, I could take you anywhere, but I’ve never really walked around it, which is a shame, because there are so many little interesting footpaths and trails that it was like a little adventure. I was converted. I was going to be running outside ALL THE TIME from now on, I decided. It would be my “thing”. I would be Fearless Adventurer Amber! I couldn’t wait!

A couple of days later, then, I set out again, with the adventuring. Once again, I headed to the river, and I was having a fine old time. So I ran on. And on. And on. It was great. The trees! The river! More bunnies! And then, in the middle of nowhere, under a random bridge… a tramp! Um, OK. I stopped at this point. The Fear returned. It seemed obvious to me that this man would try and kill me. I mean, why else would you be hanging out under a bridge in the middle of nowhere, if not to kill the next random runner girl that went past? Well, no problem, I thought, I would just double back a bit, and pick up the trail further along the river.

You can see where I’m going with this, can’t you? And I’m glad YOU can, because I certainly couldn’t see where I going. Leaving my country trail, you see, I found myself in a network of streets. This town is full of such networks. You get into them, and you can wander around for weeks, until someone stumbles across your poor, emaciated form and takes you in. Ironically enough, I knew exactly where I was. It was a part of town I’ve been to many times in the car, and a couple of times on foot, although on those occasions I was with Terry, who is a native of the town and knows its many secrets.

So I knew where I was: I just didn’t know how to get from there to where I wanted to be. Not on foot, anyway. If I’d had my car there, I could have driven straight home. That route, however, would take me along busy main roads, and wasn’t one I really wanted to take on foot, so I turned and plunged back into the woods, determined to work it out. Well, I ran and I ran. I ran for about a mile, and then the path I was on returned me abruptly to the same street I’d started from, having apparently taken me in a large loop. I turned around and set off again, this time taking a different route… which took me to slightly further along the same street I started from. Hmm.

Once again, I set off into the woods. There are lots of different routes through these woods, I discovered. You set off down one track, only to find it splitting into three more tracks a little way along it, with no clue where each of them leads. If only I’d been prepared, like the Famous Five, and brought a ball of string to unwind as I went, I might have had even the slightest clue where I was going, but alas, no.  I knew I’d gone wrong again, when I encountered these:

What was disturbing about this was that I took this photo with my phone camera, which means I was just as close to those sheep as it looks. I was in a field with sheep! Sheep were in a field with me! This was ALL KINDS OF WRONG, and by now I was starting to get a little annoyed, mostly because it was getting close to lunchtime, and if I didn’t get home soon, I’d miss Neighbours. That right there tells you all you need to know, really, doesn’t it?

Well, I turned round and I retraced my weary steps. Arriving back, once again, at the street I’d started from, I encountered a woman in a car, who slowed down and asked me directions to the mall. “If I knew where I was, I might be able to tell you,” I said, which was actually a total LIE, because I am absolutely useless when it comes to giving people directions. I couldn’t direct you from my front door to the bottom of the driveway. I can’t read maps, either, which was why I now realised that when I’d come up with the whole “I can’t possibly get lost because I have Google maps on my phone” thing, I’d obviously been smoking crack:

The map, then, was no good to me, and time was a-wastin’, so I decided to admit defeat, call Terry and ask him to come and get me. This would be humiliating, sure: I mean, I was “lost” in a place I knew well, and which I could have driven home from in a matter of minutes, but I figured walking back along that route would be a) dangerous and b) time-consuming, so I sucked it up, got my phone back out…

… and it had no credit on it. OF COURSE NOT.

This has long been a bone of contention between Terry and I. When I got my iPhone, you see, Terry insisted we go for a Pay-as-You-Go tariff, his reasoning being that as I never, ever phone anyone anyway, it would be a waste of money to pay a monthly fee for it. “You could put £10 worth of credit on the phone and it would last you all year,” said Terry, little knowing that I would burn through three times that amount in the space of ten minutes at Gran Canaria airport just a few short months later.

We argued about this for a while. My fear was that, with Pay-as-You-Go, I would always run out of credit at the exact moment I most needed it. It was inevitable, I said. AND WHO WAS RIGHT ABOUT THAT, TERRY, HUH? HUH?

So I had no credit. I couldn’t phone Terry, or, indeed anyone else. And I had no money. Of COURSE NOT. Because when you go running in the middle of nowhere, you don’t take anything with you that could conceivably be of any use, do you?

So I sent Terry an email. The phone allowed me to do this, luckily. (Actually, the more I think about it, the more grateful I am that emergency calls are free on these things. Because if they weren’t, and I got into an ACTUAL emergency, I’d have to send the police an email saying, “Help! Am being attacked!” And, knowing me, because I really detest text speak, and can never bring myself to use it, I would type it all out totally correctly, and then spell-check it before hitting send.) Unluckily, however, Terry is not like me, and doesn’t spend all day hovering over his email like a giant bat. So it took him ten minutes to read my message, during which I had decided to embark upon the long road home, using the only route I knew would definitely take me there, and not send me back to the sheep.

Now, imagine you get an email from your wife saying that she is lost, and needs your help. What do you do? Do you call her, say? OF COURSE NOT. You simply send her an email in response, and you do this because YOU DO NOT KNOW HER PHONE NUMBER.

No, Terry and I do not know each other’s phone numbers. In fairness, we don’t really need to, because we have them programmed into our phones. This is of no use to Terry whatsoever, though, because when he got my email, his phone battery was dead. OF COURSE IT was. Terry’s phone is almost always dead, and when it’s not dead? It’s lost. He’s not big on the whole cellphone thing, either, you see.

Just to recap, then: my phone has no credit, his has no battery life. He doesn’t have my phone number, I don’t have a brain. WE FAIL. At everything. GOD.

To bring this lengthy story to an end, though, I emailed Terry my number, he called me, and a few minutes later, came to my rescue. And all the way home, he pointed out the routes I COULD have taken. Which is really the story of my life.

(I now take spare change with me when I go running. Terry keeps his phone charged, and I always have credit on my phone. Not all of these statements are true…)

Folks, there has been a development in the mysterious case of Nigel, the International Man of Mystery Next Door.

It’s not much of a development, to be honest. In fact, if you just clicked through from Twitter, or wherever, hoping for some kind of juicy development, you may just feel you’ve had a wasted trip, because this development actually happened last week, and was so insignificant that I totally forgot to mention it. In the interests of keeping an accurate account of the comings and goings next door (or, er, the goings and staying gones, as the case may be), and also in case one day the police need to use this blog as evidence, let the record show that, last week, Nigel had visitors. Two of them.

I say Nigel had visitors. Obviously he didn’t, because he isn’t there. So Terry and I took it upon ourselves to speak to these visitors. You know, as nosey good neighbours do.

The two men arrived by car, and spent a few minutes sitting outside, observing the house. Terry happened to be passing the window at the time, and this activity instantly triggered his “Nigel” sensor, so he called me over, and together we watched the men get out of their vehicle and approach Nigel’s door. Both men were wearing dark suits, and looked a bit like the Men in Black, only without the talking dog, which was a bit of a shame, because that would’ve made for an AWESOME blog post, no?

Anyway, no sooner had they knocked on the door than Terry was out of the house and headed towards them. (I’d have gone with him, but I was just back from the gym and out of the shower, so I was wearing my dressing gown and a towel turban at the time…) Sadly, however, Terry’s Nancy Drew skills are less finely honed than mine, possibly because he has never been a 12 year old girl, so he didn’t manage to get much more information out of the visitors other than that the usual, “When did you last see him? Does he ever come back to the house? What, NEVER?” Terry was left with the strong impression that they were debt-collectors, or similar. I’m still convinced they were, you know, galaxy defenders, but I do have a pretty active imagination, so maybe not.

What this proves, however, other than that Terry and I would be useless detectives, is that wherever Nigel is right now, and whatever he’s doing there, not everyone in his life knows about it. He appears to have left some loose ends behind him, shall we say, and obviously if this was a novel, this would be the part where Terry and I (and possibly Rubin, because never underestimate the importance of a dog when it comes to solving mysteries) tie up those loose ends into a nice, neat little bow. It’s just a blog, though, so I’m going to have to leave you to try and tie them up yourselves. Enjoy!

P.S. I had to switch comment moderation back on this week, but I totally forgot to tell the site to notify me when comments came in, which means they’ve all been sitting in the moderation queue for a couple of days. If you posted a comment in that time, sorry, I wasn’t ignoring you – it should have been approved now!

1.  Pre-school age children should not be handed the car keys and invited to treat the vehicle as a giant toy. Cars are not toys.

2. Car horns should not be leant on for five minutes at a time.

3. Nor should they be blasted repeatedly for a similar amount of time.

4. Cars should not, under any circumstances, be treated as mobile discos. They are not mobile discos.

5. Houses are not nightclubs. They should not be treated as such.

6. Garage roofs are not for dancing on.

7. Nor are the roofs of garden sheds.

8. The Others should not throw raw burgers into other people’s gardens.

9. Or even cooked ones, for that matter.

10. Or empty beer bottles. (I mean, at least throw full ones, for God’s sake.)

Would anyone like to hazard a guess as to how many of these Things That Should Not Happen have, indeed, happened recently in this part of the world (and not all involving the same household, either)? Go on, it’s easy really…

So, I’m out walking Rubin. I’m NOT wearing a dress, you’ll be pleased to know, and neither is he. He is, however, wearing his leash, and because it’s one of those extendable ones, and Rubin likes to be as far away from me as he possibly can on his walks (perhaps he’s embarrassed by what I’m wearing, who knows?), this leash is stretched taught between my hand and his body, and remains like this for the duration of time he pulls me around the footpaths of The Ghetto. (Actually, I don’t know why I even call the outings Rubin and I take together “a walk”. It would be better described as “a pull”.)

Now, note the word FOOTpath, here, folks. This is a path for FEET. Not for WHEELS, say, but people on wheels do love to use it: mostly cyclists, but we also get the occasional MOTOR CYCLIST roaring along it, and all I can say about that is that I hope there’s a particularly hot space in hell for those people, I really do. The regular cyclists, on the other hand, don’t really bother me. Most of them are really good about ringing their bell when they get close to a pedestrian, and this gives me ample opportunity to reel Rubin in and prevent him from trying to throw himself under their wheels, which is totally what he would do, and why he is kept on his leash on this particular footpath.

Yesterday, though, this did not happen. Instead of ringing his bell to let me know of his approach (INCOMING! INCOMING!) one particular cyclist decided to sneak up on me in complete silence: a Stealth Cyclist, if you will. It was only when I felt one of those rare pricklings of danger at the back of my neck that I turned around and saw him… just as he prepared to cycle at speed into Rubin’s leash – an act that would surely have sent his bike spinning out of control, with Rubin and I spinning right after it.

I am not ashamed to admit that I shrieked like a girl at this point. OK, I am a bit ashamed to admit it, to be honest, because it was a particularly dramatic shriek. He was SO close to us, though, and he cycled right up to Rubin’s rear (note: there was plenty of space around Rubin and I, so there was no need for him to do this. I did wonder if he just hadn’t noticed the leash, but even giving him the benefit of the doubt there, it would still have meant he was planning to pass really close to me, and he was cycling fast) before swerving at the last possible second, giving me plenty of time to imagine him flying over his handlebars, and me and Rubin ending up in court on charges of Interfering With a Cyclist or somesuch. (And I just KNOW Rubin would sing like a bird to get the law off his back, and would blame it all on me…)

The cyclist, meanwhile, didn’t even give us a second glance. He just sped away nonchalantly, and I got the distinct impression, although I’m possibly just making this up, that he felt the shrieky scare he’d given me served me right for daring to be in his path. It was this, rather than the scare I’d just had, that prompted me to shout feebly after him, “You’re not supposed to cycle on footpaths, you know!” Which would’ve TOTALLY told him, except at this point I noticed that he had headphones on and wouldn’t have heard me anyway.

And THIS is why Terry normally doesn’t let me walk the dog on my own…

For the last year or two (or seven), I’ve desperately wanted to move house. The problem with that, though… well, actually, there are LOTS of problems with that, but the main one is that we just can’t afford it right now, so, in a bid to make the best of the house we have, way back in December we made a list of improvements we’d like to make, things that need to be replaced, etc.

And then we ignored all of them*, and went out and bought a bright red chair which we then spent the best part of the evening trying to cram into our tiny living room. Along with the new rug that also wasn’t on the list. Or rather, Terry tried to cram them into the room. I just… supervised.

Here is a quick glimpse of our rock n’ roll lifestyle. Or, as I think if it, “The Sims Come to Life”.

Livingroom Timelapse from Terry Miaoulis on Vimeo.

* OK, not quite ALL of them: Terry DID replace the bathroom foor on Friday. Yes, AGAIN. Take it from me, kids, never use white floor tiles in your bathroom. Or, indeed, anywhere else  you might actually want to STAND.

Well, after three years of barely even thinking about Nigel, the International Man of Mystery Next Door, let alone writing about him, I now find myself writing about him TWICE in the space of just a few days. Just call me Magic Amber, Super Sleuth Extraordinaire. Or, perhaps more accurately: Girl Who Answers the Door in Her Dressing Gown With Jogging Pants and a Hoodie Underneath Because She is SO FREAKING COLD All the Time.

Or even “Girl Who Capitalises Too Much”. You decide.

Anyway, there was no super-sleuthing involved in this morning’s Nigel incident, but I DID open the door in my dressing gown (look, it’s REALLY cold here. Also, there is something wrong with our heating, apparently. It’s probably that a dead body has been stuffed inside the pipes or something.) to find a man from Scottish Gas standing outside, holding an clip-board and squinting at me suspiciously.

“Hello!” I said, trying to look like, why, I ALWAYS dress like a homeless person! (And actually, in winter I almost always do.) Whereupon he asked me if there was actually anyone living in the house next door.

“Not living, no,” I said, glad to have yet another excuse to talk about this. “But possibly lying dead on the floor, or inside the walls?” Then I embarked on a breathless tale of how Nigel hasn’t been seen for years – YEARS – and how this one time he turned up and then left in a hurry, and I think he is maybe with MI5, but if he isn’t, then maybe a dastardly villain of some sort, or dead?

(Of course, if he IS with MI5, they will probably come round now and “silence” me for blowing his cover on the Internet. If this is the last ever post here, you’ll know why. It’ll also mean he was a bit of a rubbish spy, though, to be honest, I mean, way to raise suspicion, Nigel! If that’s even your name.)

The man from Scottish Gas was most interested in all of this. It’s the way I tell ‘em, I guess. When I’d finished he raised his eyes to the heavens and thanked the Lord said “Really? REALLY?” but in a tone of voice that suggested, “Well, we’ll be doing something about that then, don’t you worry your pretty little head about it.” Then he made a note on his clipboard, which I assume said something about Nigel, but which may well have said, “Woman next door is mad” or “Homeless people have broken into house next door and are squatting there making up outrageous stories”.

He did spent some time after that walking around Nigel’s property and making further notes, so perhaps something has now been set in motion, which will lead inevitably to an exciting denouement involving everyone in the street standing out there in their dressing gowns while police surround the house and hostage negotiators try to talk Nigel down, using one of those loud-speaker things. And then Terry and I are rewarded handsomely for our role in the whole thing, which has been… er, nothing. (Although, to be fair, Terry does sometimes mow Nigel’s front lawn.) I hope all of this doesn’t happen while we’re on holiday next week. I also hope it doesn’t lead to a less exciting denouement, in which there is some prosaic explanation for the whole mystery, and Nigel’s house is sold to a noisy family of fifteen with ten TVs and five sound systems, which they proceed to blast music from all the live-long day, while throwing endless house parties and whistling.

I bet it’s the second one.

Wow, see how easy it is to get out of the habit of blogging when there’s nothing at all happening?

Lately life has entered one of those weird “frantically-busy-but-also-mind-numbingly-boring” phases. In fact, I don’t think I’ve left the house in the past couple of weeks other than to visit the parents/walk the dog/go to the gym. THAT’S how dull it’s been.

Oh, and I started going running. Like, running outside, as opposed to on the treadmill. Because I figured that the coming winter was JUST THE TIME to start a hobby that involves being out of doors all the time. D’oh! I thought it would be fun, though: I had this image of myself, a lonely yet dignified figure, battling bravely through rain, hail and snow to pound those pavements, and saying things like, “I’m just addicted to exercise!” and “It totally clears my mind and gives me, like, space to be ME, you know?”

Of course, I was obviously on crack when I thought these things because I am forced to run through Bandit Country. Well, not “forced” exactly. I mean, no one has actually held a gun to my head and said “Run through Bandit Country, wench! Run like the wind!” Or not yet, anyway. The aforementioned all work/no play scenario means that I just don’t have time to drive somewhere nice to run, though, so Bandit Country it is. And it’s … an experience. I dunno, maybe it’s the same no matter where you run, but people here actually stop and stare as you go by, with their mouths open in astonishment. Yesterday I ran past a group of women with their kids, and they all actually stopped their conversation so they could turn round and watch me. And trust me, I was moving so slowly I was almost going backwards, so they weren’t open mouthed with awe.

Still, at least I’ll be able to run away now if someone tries to attack me with a branch again!

Anyway, I’m going to try and keep at it for… well, a while at least. Maybe until next week, because by then we’ll be deeply into winter here, and I won’t want to leave the house at all. Ever. Terry, meanwhile, is currently in training for a 10k AND a triathlon. Because that’s what kind of crazy HE is. He did ask me to join him in running the 10k, but it cost £16 (Why, I could buy another green dress for that kinda cash!) and you’re not allowed to listen to music while you run. Oh, and it would kill me. Maybe next year lifetime.

I’ve mentioned here before that while the street Terry and I live in is as pleasant and suburban as it gets, some of the areas around us… aren’t. Well, they don’t call our part of town “Bandit Country” for nothing, put it that way.

Where we're livin'

Just yesterday, for instance, I met a group of the local Bandits while I was out walking Rubin. The Bandits in question were mostly in their late teens/early twenties, and they were sitting in a little huddle outside the Ghetto Superstore, drinking. You’d think it would be too much of a cliché for me to say they were drinking Buckfast, wouldn’t you?

People, they were drinking Buckfast.

You’d also think it was too much of a cliché for me to say they had a pit bull terrier with them, no?

*Deep sigh*

As soon as the pit bull laid eyes on Rubin, of course, it went crazy.  In fact, before I knew what had happened, it was over beside us “worrying” at Rubin. Now, I should say here that it wasn’t barking or growling, or anything like that. For all I know, this might’ve been the friendliest pit bull in all the land, but I didn’t really want to take the chance on that, and because Rubin likes to think he’s a wolf (he completely ignores small dogs, but will often bark ferociously at larger ones, because… well, because he was born without a brain, obviously), I was frightened enough by the dog’s attentions that when it still hadn’t left us alone a few minutes later, I snatched Rubin into my arms and… ran off like a girl.

Only at this point did the Youth of Today dispatch a Junior Bandito (about 8 years old, I’d say) to call off the hound.

So, that’s the kind of thing we’re dealing with.

Because I never learn, though, I decided to take Rubin on the exact same walk today.  In my defence, it’s pretty much the only place I CAN walk him without having to get in the car and drive somewhere, and I rarely have time for that, so Bandit Country it is. I was about ten minutes into the walk, Rubin almost hysterical with joy by my side, when I became aware of the sound of a bicycle, directly behind me.

I was on a footpath at this point, and there were no actual roads nearby, but people often cycle on the footpaths round here, so I thought nothing of this, and moved to the side of the (wide) footpath to let it pass.

The bike moved with me.

I moved even closer to the side, until my arm was brushing the branches of the trees which grow along the pathway.

The bike moved too.

At this point it struck me that this bicycle was moving very, very slowly, given that it was able to stay behind me, at my slow walking pace.  It could also have passed me at any time: the path is a wide one, and I hadn’t exactly been filling it up even before I moved.

Clearly, then, it was following me.  Great.

I glanced over my shoulder, and sure enough, there he was: another Junior Bandito (not the Pitt Bull handler,  this time), grinning unpleasantly as the front tyre of his bike almost brushed my heels. I’m no good at estimating people’s ages, but I’d say he was probably 10 or 11. Young, but old enough to know better than to harass people in the street, I’d say.

I decided the best thing to do here would be to ignore him, so I looked away and continued walking.

“HEY! UGLY!” the bandit called.

At this point all I can say is that something snapped in my head. Because, honestly, I’ve HAD IT with people thinking it’s perfectly OK to insult and harass each other. ENOUGH.

So I stopped dead in my tracks (he almost ran into me) and turned round to face him.

“Did you say something? ” I asked pleasantly.

Well, the bandit almost fell off his bike. The look that crossed his face was almost comical as his brain struggled to register the fact that the worm had apparently turned.

“No,” he said, his voice shaking slightly. “I didn’t say a thing.”

“That’s strange,” I said, still calm. “I’m sure I heard you say something to me. What was it?”

The kid quaked. He clearly had no idea how to deal with this, so he decided to go with denial. Nope, he’d said nothing, not him. Why, he was just riding along on his bike, minding his own business!

“Well, there’s no one else here,” I said, “So I’m pretty sure it was you. What did you say?”

“I just said hello,” blurted the bandit.  “That was it.”

“Really?” I said, puzzled. “That’s funny: you just told me you didn’t say anything. So now you’re telling me you DID say something: is that right?”

Silence.  Pinned into a corner by his lies (I should totally be a crime writer, right?), the bandit had no choice but to get on his hoss bike and get out of town.  Unfortunately for me, he managed to do the first bit OK, but, once on his bike (he’d jumped off for our “chat”) he decided to go back to following me, albeit at a slightly further distance this time.

“GINGER!” he shouted this time.

So I turned round and karate chopped him. No, OK, I didn’t. But I did turn round, and, once again, the kid almost fell off his bike in fright. You’d think he’d have learned the first time, no?

“Ah, so you DO have something to say to me!” I beamed. “I thought so! But I didn’t quite hear you. Tell you what, why don’t you come and say it to my face, rather than waiting until my back’s turned? That would be the brave thing to do, don’t you think?”

No, I have no idea why I was talking like this to a child. I mean, clearly it wasn’t exactly my finest hour, and equally clearly, I wouldn’t have been nearly so brave had he been just a little bit older. Of if he’d had The Friendliest Pit Bull in All The Land with him.  But, like I said, I’m absolutely sick of not being able to walk my dog close to my own home without being taunted and harassed by idiot kids.  This has happened several times now, the worst time being when I was held at branch-point in the woods, and had to phone the police. And although this was a young ‘un, I still think he was old enough to learn that following strange women in the street and calling them names is not a pleasant thing to do. And that sometimes, when you choose to do this, you just might get yourself in trouble.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the words themselves that bother me. I am not so insecure that a child calling me “ugly” will make me feel I actually AM ugly (Sorry, blog commenters who say more or less the same thing!), and the “ginger” thing is just stupid. It’s the fact that people today apparently think it’s OK to taunt strangers in the street IN ANY WAY that makes my blood boil. To follow people, and call them names, and to then try to deny it is stupid and cowardly in the extreme, and I don’t care if you’re eleven or eleventy-one: if you behave like that towards someone, you should expect to get called on it.

I know lots of people would give the old, “Ah, but they’re only kids!” argument, here, but that one won’t wash with me, sorry. If they’re old enough to be out in public unsupervised, then they’re old enough to be taught that it’s not nice to follow people and be rude to them. If your kid ISN’T old enough to understand that message, then you keep him under supervision until he is: simple. Quite apart from anything else, it’s pretty damn dangerous for kids to do this kind of thing, because while the worst thing I’d ever do would be to tell them off, if they pick on someone a little more aggressive, they could end up in some serious trouble.

So I told the bandito all of this. At length.  And … he turned and ran away. “Leave me alone!” he sobbed, jumping off his bike a few metres down the path.

“I don’t really see why I should,” I said, reasonably. “I mean, you haven’t been leaving ME alone, have you? You’ve been following me and calling me names, so maybe I’ll just follow YOU now, and call you some names, how would you like that?”

He wouldn’t, was the answer. And he agreed to stop following me if I just stopped talking. So I did. And you know, that little Bandit was as good as his word. I like to think he will grow up to be a better Bandit now: a Bandit with a basic understanding of how to behave in public, and why it’s Not Nice to follow people and shout names at them. And thus, a new era of peace will be forged between the Banditos and the ordinary people of Bandit Country, all thanks to me.

Actually, I know I’ll just be lucky if my windows don’t get broken next time I’m out. Such is life.

(ETA : not that it particularly matters, but in the interests of accuracy, this all actually happened on Saturday -I wrote the post then, but then totally forgot to publish it. Ooops.)

A quick note to the people in our town who are still setting off fireworks every single night, even although Guy Fawkes Night was four days ago: please, just get over it. My dog is losing his tiny mind here. I am losing my tiny mind here. Enough, already. Please.

And, you know, I get that people like fireworks. I do, really. Hell, I even like fireworks myself. The thing about fireworks, though, is that unless you’re at EPCOT, or at the Magic Kingdom (Seriously,  when the single “star” goes shooting over the top of the Cinderella castle? I could weep.), fireworks tend to get old pretty quickly for me.  Especially when they’re not even particularly interesting fireworks, but are just those monotonous old bangers that make a lot of noise without actually doing very much else. You could watch that happen maybe once or twice, and it might be kinda cool, but when it’s been happening every. single. night. for two weeks, you get to wondering whether all those loud noises done blew these people’s brains out, ya know?

Actually, to be fair, this year has been a little better than previous years, in that it’s only been going on for a couple of weeks, as opposed to the entire months of October, November and December. The problem is, though,  that people around here find bangers so very exciting and compelling that they’ll be out every night until the end of the year now, grunting and going, “BIG NOISE! WE MAKES IT! BANG!”, Rubin will be all, “Hysterical! Hysterical! Any excuse to bark my fool head off!” and I’ll be all, “whiney, whine-whine, moan, moan, moan.” Until January.

And the irony is, after the first couple of big bangs, Rubin gets used to it and shuts the hell up. I never do, though…

This morning I kicked off the day the way I meant to go on – by crawling all the way inside our blue recycling bin, to retrieve the letter I had intended to post in the usual fashion (in a post box) but had, instead, just tossed merrily in the trash, along with the handful of other rubbish I happened to be carrying at the time:

A load of old rubbish

(I had to crawl allthe way in. It may be a bin for paper and stuff, but it still sucked, let me tell you.  Also: those are my spechul dog-walking shoes, by the way. Please don’t judge me too harshly)

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re all, “FAKE! FAKRZ! It’s totally fake, because why would she just happen to have someone with a camera with her when she crawled inside the trash? YOU SUCK. ” You are wrong, though. Well, sort of: I mean, I do suck, but not in the “taking fake photos way” you’re thinking. The photo, you see, was taken by Terry, and we had a camera with us as we headed out to walk the dog this morning so I could take a picture of this:

Bandit Country

Yup, this is where we’re livin’ folks: BANDIT COUNTRY. And you thought all of those “In the Ghetto” posts were just a joke, didn’t you?  This bridge marks the entrance to our part of town – a.k.a. “BANDIT COUNTRY” – which I guess makes Terry and I… BANDITS.  Yes, bandits.*

(The “cool” thing to do in Bandit Country, by the way, is to hang out underneath that bridge, listening to tinny music from one of those crappy MP3 payers that have speakers (And that are BANNED under my rule.) while rocking back and forth in the foetal position.  There ain’t no party like a bandit party, that’s for sure!)

Other things spotted this morning here in Bandit Country:

Exhibit A: A huge heap o’rubbish:

rubbish: heap o

Interestingly, this rubbish wasn’t located particularly close to any houses, but was in the “forest”, which means that someone must have gone to quite a bit of trouble to dump it there. WHY? Why do people do stuff like this? Do they not realise that the council will come and collect this stuff from your door if you just place it inside your rubbish bin? Why has no one shot them yet?

Exhibit B: Empty can of ‘White Star’

White Star, can of

I have no idea what type of alcohol “White Star” actually is, but I’m guessing either cider or cheap lager. We spotted five of these cans in the space of about two minutes, though. Looks like someone was thirsty!

Exhibit C: Half naked man

Now, I didn’t get a photo of this unfortunately – or “fortunately”, depending on your point of view – and I actually saw the half-naked man on Monday, anyway.  You see, on Monday,  it stopped raining for a couple of hours. You probably heard about it on the news or something. During this brief dry spell, the sun came out,  and it was briefly what you could call “fairly warm-ish”. It was still Scotland, though, and it was still September, so when I say “warm” I mean “well, it wasn’t freezing“.

Try telling that to the half-naked man, though, who was hanging out with his (fully clothed) friends outside the Ghetto Superstore (another Bandit Country pastime), wearing nothing but a pair of shorts and his shoes. His chest and legs were bare (when I first noticed him, he was standing behind some shrubs and was only visible from the waist up, so I thought he was actually COMPLETELY naked. Seriously, nothing would surprise me any more.) and he didn’t appear to be carrying a sweater or jacket of any kind, so I can only assume he had actually left the house (un)dressed like that. Yeah.

Actually, that’s not even particularly unusual around here. I think the thing about Scottish people is that we’re just so unused to sunshine and warmth (because we don’t get much of either) that we have come to believe the two to be inseparable. And so it is that even if there’s frost on the ground in December, if the sun is shining you will see Scottish people out baring their pale blue skin to the elements and trying to walk nonchalantly along in nothing but jeans and a thin t-shirt, accessorised with armfuls of goosebumps and a frozen expression. Coats are, like, seriously uncool around here. If you want to fit in round Bandit Country way, you freeze your ass off and like it. Honestly, coats are for the pansies over in Oultlaw Land, on the other side of the bridge.

We are SO moving, first chance we get.

*Rubin, on the other hand, has pretty much always been a bandit. And proud to be one…