Stairlift to Heaven (24 page)

“I’ll have a word with him,” said the man from the council. “And please accept apologies.

The lengths you have to go in order to stay ahead of the game.

****

June 2 2010.
THE NEIGHBOURS FROM HELL.

A month ago to the day the Pollitts moved into the house next-door-but-one that had been empty and up for sale for the last six months, following the death of its owner Mrs Linney. I didn’t know immediately that the Pollitts were Neighbours from Hell, but early indications were that you wouldn’t bet against it. That they arrived in an old off-road vehicle, the transport of choice of Neighbours from Hell in my experience, was a pointer I failed to note at the time.

There are five Pollitts in all, four if you ignore the baby, which Mr and Mrs Pollitt are obviously in the habit of doing as they left it crying for the entire three hours it took them to move in, after first securing it to an ornamental stone bird bath in the back garden. Two minutes later they tied their dog to the birdbath alongside the baby and thereafter it was a toss-up which of them was making the most noise.

Mr Pollitt’s low forehead gives him a distinctly Neanderthal appearance. Low foreheads invariably indicate low intelligence whereas high foreheads indicate high intelligence, and although either Ant or Dec - I’m not sure which, I’ve never been able to watch them for long enough to find out which is which, but the least short one - disproves the high forehead/high intelligence theory, I suspect that in Mr Pollitt’s case it would stand up to the closest scrutiny.

Mrs Pollitt could best be described as a cross between Janice Battersby of Coronation Street and a pit bull terrier, but nowhere near as refined. She was wearing a sort of giant pink babygro, multi-coloured Wellington boots with flowers on and a facial expression like a smacked arse.

The boy is about fourteen, that magical age when a teenager goes from knowing hardly anything at all to knowing absolutely everything. He has no visible skin on his face so far as I can tell, the spaces between his acne and his tattoos being taken up by a collection of ironmongery consisting mainly of rings and metal studs.

The girl, at a guess a year younger, is at the age when a girl’s periods arrive, along with a large helping of attitude. Her general demeanour indicated that she had recently taken delivery of these twin curses, the latter in spades. She wore a pair of green cycling shorts under a purple tutu and a crop top with the words ‘Too Drunk to Fuck’ written on the front.

The dog is of indeterminate ancestry. It certainly has some collie in it, although what was in the collie, or what the collie was in, isn’t clear, possibly an Old English sheepdog or an Irish wolfhound. It is a sort of muddy grey, or mud and grey, its fur matted, and has two dreadlocks hanging down each side of its head.

Of the six of them the dog looks by some distance to be the most intelligent, but as even the most intelligent dog in the world would be incapable of fashioning its own dreadlocks it is obvious that one of the Pollitts must have plaited them into its fur. And if they’re capable of doing that what else are they capable of? I shuddered to think.

Mr Pollitt is called Wayne. His wife is not called Waynetta, although she might well be, but Liz. The boy is Keanu. The girl is Catherine Zeta. The baby has been blessed with the name Honey Nectarine. The dog is called You Twat, if Wayne Pollitt’s instruction to it to ‘Get from under the bleeding feet you twat,’ and Catherine Zeta Pollitt’s ‘Stop trying to shag my fucking leg you twat’ are anything to go by.

Judging by their accents Pollitt is probably from Manchester, his wife from London, the kids from Hell. I didn’t have to ask their names. They could be heard clearly by anyone within half a mile of their back garden, even the deaf. The dialogue went something like:-

Wayne Pollitt: “Liz, for fuck’s sake give Honey Nectarine her fucking dummy.”

Liz Pollitt: “I’m tryin’ to wean ‘er off it ain’t I.”

 “Keanu’s just fumped me again, Mum!”

Keanu Pollitt: “Well she were tickling t’ dog’s bollocks.”

Catherine Zeta Pollitt: “He likes ‘avin’ his bollocks tickled.”

Liz Pollitt: “All males do, Caffrin Zee-ah, all males do.”

Keanu Pollitt: “The slag already knows that.”

Catherine Zeta Pollitt: “Fuck off you!”

Etc. Mercifully they all went out in their yobmobile in the afternoon. Except for the dog that is, which spent half the afternoon in the back garden, barking. The other half it spent howling.

I could see the dog, tied to a clothes-line pole, from our back bedroom window. In an effort to shut it up I opened the window, took a small ornament we could do without from the window bottom and threw it at it. My hope was that even if I missed the dog it might take it as a warning and stop barking in case the next one hit it, or if it did hit it give it something to bark about. It landed about a yard away. The dog ate it. Or at least it attempted to eat it, before spitting it out in disgust. Then it carried on alternately barking and howling until the Pollitts returned.

The following day all the Pollitts went out early; Wayne Pollitt and his wife Liz presumably to work, Keanu and Catherine Zeta to school, or more likely to hang about the local shopping arcade possibly dealing drugs; the baby, Honey Nectarine, probably to a childminder, or maybe a kennels. The dog was not placed in kennels and was left out in the garden to howl and bark like a demented Dervish all day.

I could see the way things were going so I wasted no time in reporting the situation to the Environmental Health people, who promised to send someone round. However if I knew them it would be in their own good time, so what to do about it in the meantime? I write my books every morning for three or four hours - I was into the last couple of chapters of ‘Inflatable Hugh’ at the time - and I wasn’t going to be able to write a word with that racket going on.
Perhaps if I were to sneak up on the dog armed with the carving knife and cut off its dreadlocks it would get the message, much as Delilah had quietened down Samson when she cut off his hair?
A nice thought, but improbable. Far better to cut off its testicles with the carving knife; there would be more and louder howling initially but it wouldn’t last for long. In the end I decided to take a less direct, more diplomatic route, and reason with the Pollitts, so when they had all returned to their lair that evening I called round.

Pollitt answered the door, surliness personified. “What?”

“I’m your next-door-but-one neighbour. It’s about your dog.”

At this his bottom lip jutted out even further. “What about it?”

“It’s been in your back garden all day long barking and howling.”

He cocked an ear. “I can’t hear anything.”

“That could be because it isn’t barking and howling now. Possibly because you’ve fed it.”

“Nobody else has complained.”

“That’s because everyone else goes out to work during the day. They wouldn’t be able to hear it while they’re a work. Unless they’re unfortunate enough to work within a five mile radius of your back garden. Anyway I want you to put a stop to it.”

“And how am I supposed to do that?”

“Well one way would be to keep it in the house, not out in the back garden.

“If we do that it shits in the house.”

“Well train it to shit somewhere else.”

“We have, we’ve trained it to shit in the garden.”

“But if you leave it in the garden it barks and howls all day. Probably because it’s up the arse in shit. But whatever the reason it’s not good enough and I insist you put a stop to it.”

“Tell him to fuck off and mind his own fucking business, Dad.” Catherine Zeta had joined her father. She turned her attention to me, and reiterated her advice, lest her father hadn’t heard her. “Fuck off and mind your own fucking business.”

“You heard the little lady,” said Pollitt, and closed the door in my face.

I rang the Environmental Health people and reported the conversation. The man there said he had every sympathy but it would take about three months to deal with. “Initial letter. Follow up letter in stronger terms when they ignore the initial letter. Then, if they ignore the letter in stronger terms, a letter threatening them with County Court.” I congratulated him and his department for pulling out all the stops. Without a trace of irony in his voice he thanked me for my kind words and said they were only doing their job. I told Atkins about the situation with the dog and he offered to shoot it for me. I was tempted but told him I wasn’t that desperate yet.

The following day, having paced out the distance from the end of my house to the middle of the Pollitt’s house, I found that the nearest point of our back garden to the clothes-line post to which the Pollitt’s dog is tethered to be 26 yards. I estimated that the chain by which the dog is hitched to the clothes-line post to be eight feet in length. This meant that I would have to throw an eight ounce minced-beef and crushed-sleeping pills ball a distance of 26 yards and land it in a sixteen feet diameter circle. A piece of cake. Or rather a piece of minced-beef and crushed- sleeping pill.

The Trouble came into the kitchen “Why are you making meatballs?”

“They’re for the Pollitt’s dog.”

“You’re going to try feeding it? In the hope it will stop barking?”

“In the certain knowledge it will stop barking.”

I put The Trouble in the picture as I added the six crushed sleeping pills to the pound of beef mince and formed it into two eight ounce balls. I half-expected her to raise some opposition to my plan as she used to be in the RSPCA until the day she swerved to miss a cat and suffered a whiplash injury and went off animals, but none came. No doubt she was as heartily sick and fed up with the Pollitt’s dog barking and howling as I was. “Right,” I said, “get yourself upstairs and watch out of the back bedroom window and tell me if I hit the target.”

“Aren’t you going to cook the meatballs first?”

“No, they might disintegrate in flight if I cook them.”

Her latent RSPCA connection emerged. “You’ll give the dog worms, feeding it raw meat.”

“That won’t worry it, it’ll be asleep. I shouldn’t think the worms will be too active either.”

The Trouble went up to the bedroom and I went out into the back garden. The dog was howling fit to burst. I’d already been down to the park for half-an-hour’s practice to get my range - no sign of the Zimmer Frame team practicing so they might by now have abandoned the idea - but even so I decided to take the precaution of having a practice throw in situ with a large pebble the same weight as the meat ball. I took up my position and tossed the pebble into the Pollitt’s garden. The howling increased.

“You’ve hit the dog,” said The Trouble, from the bedroom window.

“Good.” Having found my range I then expertly tossed the first of the meatballs. The barking stopped. I looked up to The Trouble. “Did it land in the target area?”

“Yes.”

“What’s happening? Is the dog eating it?”

“It’s sniffing at it.”

I waited a moment or two. “Well?”

“It’s still sniffing at….no, no it’s turned its nose up at it; it’s turned away.”

“Shit!”

“I said you should have cooked it, the trouble with you is you don’t listen.”

I had to admit she could be right. After all the meat in tins of dog food is cooked. I decided to leave things as they were for the time being in the hope the dog would change its mind and eat it. If it didn’t I would have another go with a cooked meatball at the next available opportunity. The barking continued until the Pollitts arrived home so it looked like the dog had continued to ignore the meatball, either that or it ate it and it’s got a stronger constitution than I’d given it credit for.