Salty Tires
Sylvia Shawcross
The person next door to me built a monster-like home. It towers over me like a deep purple, well… monster. Right next to me—not a grass expanse of yard away, but right next to me.
The decks they built are high above my hovel looking down on me and even if I were to put up a wall, it would be have to be two stories tall to avoid their unannounced gaze. It is just not feasible. The peaceful private life I struggled so hard to keep and preserve has been violated. No one knows the sacrifices in all these years I’ve made to be “home.” To be here.
I don’t talk about it. I could, but I don’t. What would be the point?
I cannot fault the man. It was his property to do with as he saw fit. I do not hate him and his family. I don’t know them. Sadly I don’t want to know them. I’m sure they are lovely people. We all keep to ourselves. It is the way it is now anyway.
They broke my heart and don’t even know it. How do you talk to someone who breaks your heart as if it was just a passing conversation? When you stand there bleeding and they stand there proud and possessive and possibly quite eager to show off their dream home? How could you explain that your hovel so hardly fought for was your dream home too?
What a killjoy that would be. How unkind of me not to celebrate their happiness. I work at accepting. I try not to be bitter. There is no way, mourning as I am to make lemonade of the situation now.
Oh I knew that someone one day might build there. It was an empty lot. Small though and steep and full of fill. In the spring and summer I would go there and gather wild flowers for the vase or the seeds of the sumac for lemonade strangely enough. In those days when I was happy. When I actually made lemonade. Even out of bad situations.
I could have accepted a bungalow. That’s what was rumoured to be the plan. I should have known better—here, in this 15-minute well-heeled city in the making. I think they call it in-fill. Then it became a two storey house and then really, a three storey if you count the back part that opens out onto the yard. Then it was going to have a granny suite for the parent.
Now it has an Air B&B. And lots of cars, trucks and equipment. It is not a world I understand. But then I know, everybody is doing the best they can and this is their way.
I am sure that there are those who do not like me and are delighted at the intrusion of my peace with this monster home. They pass by and snicker perhaps. It doesn’t matter. In this life you have not been someone if you have no enemies. I used to be a reporter. Reporters do not have an easy life. You will be at times well hated.
Well, in those days. Nowadays a real reporter is a hard thing to find. Nowadays it seems that reporters feed on fluff and gossip and sunshine to be liked—not necessarily respected. To be bought and paid for mostly.
Here by the monster home, in my hovel, I miss the branches of the trees by the bedroom window where the horned owl would sit, hooting in the wee hours like a comfort, like a hug. All these years. I miss the light I had there because now I keep the curtain closed at all times because it is not a good view looking at the side of a house. I miss the wild turkeys that would routinely cluster there with their silly ugliness.
I just miss the wild turkeys. Turkeys are not beautiful. They truly are not beautiful birds. They are not finches or peacocks. Then again, they aren’t exactly vultures but they could be. They liked the salt on the tires of my car for some reason and I would catch them pecking at them.
They don’t much come around anymore since the building went up. I hope they survived the hunting season before Thanksgiving. All of them. Perhaps they all made their way to a safe wild wood. Poor things.
In a way I wish we all could retreat to the safe wild wood. In this world they are making. They still pave paradise but they call it different things.
Here’s a freakin’ earworm for those of us who feel sorry for ourselves. Like me. Today.
Sylvia Shawcross is a writer from Canada. Visit her SubStack if you’re so inclined.
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sweet. Thank you.
Locally this type of development is known as a “McMansion” — you take a normal sized single family home lot and put some huge house that reaches practically to the property line, overshadoing the neighbors. Some cities like ours have planning requirements which prevent this in the form of mandatory setbacks, height restrictions and a requirement to notify and consult with neighbors during the planning process. The pushback by developers is predictable, obviously existing homeowners are selfish and privleged, contributing to the housing shortage etc. etc.
(Developers are never happy unless everything looks like Mumbai — endless high density housing for worker bee producer units. Amenities “optional”.)
How this any different than a Tommy article without moslems.
Not being on my life vocabulary list, I had to look hovel up. So sorry that happened. Saw the same thing happen to friends in town that had a conservatively sized home on Lake Michigan. In anticipation of a similar event we took an advanced line of credit against our house such that we could buy the adjacent wooded lot for “cash” to improve our bargaining stance. Cash sales tend to win over financed sales for a lot of reasons. We got to know the owners of the lot well enough to anticipate that they would likely sell. They did. Don’t have any tires scattered about. There may be some tires buried in the on site trash pit leftover from the original farmer. Each year frost heaving brings some of it to the surface. Probably a good thing they are buried. Not going out of my way to discover what else is buried down there. Such as old DDT containers emptied onto the remnant orchard of heirloom apples back when the foundation for the book Silent Spring was built. The worst of the disease carrying mosquitoes tend to breed in tires and similar water sources. Hovel. In time mine will become a hovel. After I die. Like an song banging the back of your brain. Hovel: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hovel
Thinking of you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujScOgsci4s
This is like poetry. A sad poem that mirrors the dread I feel about our very near future. A future where everything nice, everything beautiful, is being ripped away from us.
I just wish the masses would understand that we no longer live in normal times. Our rulers throughout the West WANT us miserable and impoverished.
Maybe I’m going off topic. But I suspect your neighbour knows exactly what he has done to you and is exactly like our politicians – not only unsympathic to our diminished lives, but believing we deserve it for being less affluent than them. They want to live like gods looking down on us – as your neighbour is literally doing.
But is the king dead yet? Long live the King
Of course we made love, but it was mainly about the excitement of going to new places we had never been to before, when we moved to London together.
We were on our own. Our family and friends were 250 miles away in Lancashire
I love her so much, I knew, I would never betray her.
She is My Girl. My Life. The Mother of My Kids..and The Grandmother of our Grandkids She keeps getting mistaken as the Blonde Girl The Mother.
She is an OAP – nearly as old as me…Yoga, Swimming and RockFitChick and Wednesday Mornings and Smiling a lot
I would be totally useless without my wife
Nice Girl – Salt of the Earth
FIT
You give off such a creepy vibe, going on and on about this made up wife using the same exact phrases over and over like it’s some kind of fetish you have. You’ve never been to London or England. You’re just posting total bollocks here day and night, day after day.
Go on, prove me wrong. Take a photo tomorrow of a London street sign in your area with a copy of this week’s Standard next to it.
Go on, I dare you. Piece of piss if you really live here. You can prove me wrong without giving away anything personal about you.
Just take a photo of street sign with a print copy of the Standard next to it and I’ll believe you have a “rock chick” wife and all the rest of the bollocks you come out with.
I’m going to make a little prediction that you don’t do anything of the kind bruv. Let’s see if I’m right.
See him as a child who runs in on an adult conversation, naked, and squawking absurdities. These are the types of low quality humans employed by the state, because no one with a functioning brain would accept such a position.
Oooh er. I hope the Savile protectors didnt read that last comment 😟
Redpill Reader,
I like a Challenge
“I’m going to make a little prediction that you don’t do anything of the kind bruv.”
No one in England uses the word “bruv”
In England the word is bro
You are probably an American – never got out of your own state in America..Never got a passport – Never seen Led Zeppelin
Prove me wrong
Lets see if you can write in English (English) not English(US)
Yes they do. ALL the time. If you really lived in London you could not fail to be aware of that.
Imagine training A.i. to recognise
D E M E N T I A …
Well first one would need a
Certified Lucid Example,
To communicate publicly,
To assess Awareness, in all personas.
Just a thought that may potentially help you rest your headache , regarding TonyOp. Eerie/Abstract, hole in one ?
Certainly not an absurd possibility, for any Body, like Big Pharma interested in the miniscule psychological detail of the habits, tendencies & thought processes of somebody sadly afflicted with Dementia:- maybe a testbed, for new medications, with wife’s Approval!? Maybe, she holds power of attorney and he is none the wiser… ♡
All Round reaction, Rhyme & Reason…
A Loaded Gun, best laid 👇 down…
Ask his ‘missus’ 😂 & securely discharged,
Obviously:- keep it Up.
Best wishes,
Balky
‘I like a Challenge’
Great! Post a photo and prove Red Pill Reader wrong instead of boring everyone to death with your ridiculous,irritating stories and improper use of capital letters.
“No one in England uses the word “bruv””
Now I’m certain you don’t live in London. The residents of London have known to be predominantly of foreign descent since the 2011 census. English is practically a second language here now. Get on a bus and listen! Even when people do speak “English” it is often in a grotesque dialect and accent derived from black American culture. (Hearing White English schoolkids speaking this way is truly disheartening – especially from girls.) “Bruv” is heard far more common than “bro.”
She was on her way to her dance class in 2016 – crossing the road, and was hit by a car..The driver phoned me up. He said sorry, I didn’t see her, I have just run over your wife. I screamed at my son…Mum has been in accident.. We got there a minute later..and she was already in an ambulance that happened to be passing.
When we got to the hospital – She said I have got to do this Really Fast…It will hurt – remember when you gave birth.
No time for Pain Killers
Just Do It – putting her smashed bones back together in her leg.
She couldn’t walk for months, and I nursed
her back together an air boot for 6 months – still got some titanium in her leg
And she still goes to Rock Fit Chick nearly every week – in fact she helped to get the Dance Teacher Qualified – at the Second Attempt
and u think i am making this up
Come on then – Present any evidence you have that anything I write about my wife and family is not true…
Instead of Just Slagging Me Off
Ok since you ask – here’s a list, off top of my head – Admins probably can add to it
1– You call our parliament “Houses of Westminster” – we don’t do that. It’s “Houses of Parliament” , “Parliament”, or “Westminster”. It’s never “houses of Westminster”.
2– You think Manchester gets frozen lakes and snow every year – no one who’s ever lived in the UK would think that, you muppet.
3 — You think London, where you claim to live (sometimes) has great tap water. Everyone who lives in London knows our water tastes like chlorine and dirty pipes.
4 — You don’t seem to know where you bloody live mate, it keeps changing. Do you live in a little cottage in rural Surrey or do you live in Croydon, which is a London Borough that hasn’t been in Surrey for the last 60 years, or do you live in Central London? Because you have said all of those at one time.
5 — You keep forgetting how many kids and grandkids you’re supposed to have.
There you go, bruv. Hope it helps.
Now are you going to make me look stupid by posting that photo of a UK street sign with this week’s Standard, or today’s Guardian, or whatever next to it?
There’s always time for painkillers.
I think that the poster may well be an AI ‘bot’.
edit to my post of a minute ago: I’m referring to the ‘commenter’ to whom you replied, of course!
So they have us believe, but I don’t think this is the case.
If these AI bots were so sophisticated there wouldn’t be any need for troll armies
Agreed, it’s not dry enough for AI. This in my opinion is a man living out a fantasy of what could have been.
He has a talent of sorts, I imagine his writings being popular among the plebs, people who enjoy Mills and Boon romance, and other sentimental, cloying fare.
He’s one of Syl’s favourite posters 😂
In my response to you of a couple of minutes ago, I’m of course referring to the ‘commenter’ to whom you replied!
Inside his mind, he lives there, that troubled troubled town, living day to day b/c the week is just too damn long.
🤢🤢…………🤮
According to some your the only real truthful journalist on the site.
Better if Tony remains one of the great mysteries of the world, like how they built the pyramids or the identity of Jack the Ripper…
I wonder if Tony hails from Whitechapel. Perhaps he can regail us with a tale of his great great grandaddy the East London surgeon who was into the occult. 🙂
Hey: tony….whatever
Take it somewhere else. You’re useless here. You’re nothing but noise.
if lucky, people get old and die, still in love with the flowers, the trees and the loves of their lives. They all knew Tubular Bells. I listened to it 25 times but couldn’t stand it any more. I asked my then Girfriend’s best friend (next door)
I give You Tubular Bells – Almost New – not Scratched Much
For Rush 2112 – She Said – Yeh…
So I took this record home and kind of knew, I had to find a girl who loved Rush as much as I did…ans it was in her Record Collection.. I said I think I can get tickets Stafford Bingley Halls is it a date then?
She said OK….
So we both ran to the front to see Rush Live
Such Joy
“Rush – 2112 [HD FULL SONG]”
🤢🤮
He’s like millwall, everybody hates him but he doesn’t care.
I was feeling sorry for myself yesterday when I wrote this piece. At the end of the day, I must be grateful to have a house to live in where the raccoons and crows and deer still visit and there are trees. So many have much less. So I’ll do the guilt thing on myself for having complained.
Don’t feel guilty. I’ve witnessed this type of encroachment at properties that were once inhabited by families, only to be bought up by people who think about nothing but money.
Houses of multiple occupation are an in thing and often subsidized by local authorities if they have homeless or former prisoners staying. This breaks that once fragile community spirit and will have residents left feeling as if they are surrounded by strangers.
We formed communities to stop this happening. I see it as just one of the plans to make long standing residents feel uneasy and move out. The parasites can then snap up the property in a bid to do the same thing.
You portray yourself and your life Beautifully.
I love reading you
Purple? Wow. Crazy big houses that eat up the land! Hungry houses. It is ok to complain.
Yesterday morning, though, there was a man out in the courtyard in his underwear screaming at the top of his lungs, right at dawn. He also had socks on. Mostly unintelligible, except for ” We are all the same!” Over and over. I am glad I am different, and also that I was inside. He probably was on a crazy cocktail of psychiatric drugs. He went away after scaring some girls across the street.
It still ended up being a beautiful day. I hope you find a ton of beauty, Sylvia.
I love stained glass. It lets the light in. It is like painting with light. And it changes with the day’s light thruout the day.
When I want the light, but not the sight, I put stained glass there. I love color.
After the Croatian Gathering (2001) we went to Bosnia with 3 trucks. We had been told about a large field in the eponymous village 3 miles above the Grabovice (Grab-oh-Vitza) dam. We were parked there on that field for several weeks. No sweat.
At about 10.15 pm every night, a guy came out of one of the houses across the green, and just screamed wordlessly at the top of his voice for about. It was an ‘ethnically cleansed’ area. The edge of the valley was lined with rifle pits facing down the valley.
The Bosnian villagers told us they were for when they expected the Serbs to come for them, but they didn’t.
Do not park your truck on the beach facing the dam at full moon, however romantic it seems. The water level can rise without warning up to 5 meters.
2 of our guys DID park there.
My partner gave me some stick because I refused, and would only park on the slipway that led to the beach. It only went up 1 and a half meters that night.
She got the point. It didn’t do the wheel bearings of the trucks any good. If they had been petrol/gasoline powered we would have been rightly buggered, but the diesels started. If 5 meters they would probably have drowned.
I had to drive and find a restaurant open to phone Tim in Sarajevo and get him to speak to the dam people in Serbo-Croat to get them to open the sluices and let the water level down..
C’est la vie.
When I lived in NYC there one tree in the backyard of the adjoining building which happened to be an ancient synagogue. I lived on the first floor back apartment in one of 24 apartments in old six floor walk up. One day the elderly Rabbi died and his replacement gave permission to the rich well known photographer who owned the building whose backyard abutted ours, gave him permission to cut down the only tree in all three yards, because it blocked the light into his yard. He owned the entire building. One day I came home from work and some stranger was chainsawing away at “my” bit of nature and I broke down crying. The tree was right outside my bedroom window. Without it all I could see was a chain linked fence, a parking lot and a 17 story behemoth. I ran crying to the local police station but of course… it was then I plotted my exodus from the big chitty where I grew up and lived for 55 years. The synagogue is now full floor apartments that sell for millions right on the busiest east west avenue in NYC. As for me, I live in rural Maine where my worries are now the mice and voles squirrels chipmunks raccoons and skunks that want to live here with me in my rented house. I’m not bragging believe me … life is a constant and sometimes fruitless fucking mess.
You have good reason to complain, Sylvia. I would hate to have a monster house towering over my home, and I would be sad about missing turkeys and trees and a window that now has to be curtained all the time. I feel for you, I really do.
Gratefulness for all you still have and love is a beautiful thing, though. All the best to you!
Yes.
And there was some of us thinking you live in langley.
Could try posting Kafka’s “The Castle” through his letterbox (assuming such constructions still have one). May potentially influence his attitude to ‘more detached’ neighbours.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle_(novel)
(Salty Tires = Faulty Towers?)
In Oldham, we had midsummer until my Birthday the end of August.
We had to go back to school first week in September…and I went on my push bike (it suddenly got incredibly cold) but we did not need yet “Salty Tires”
Halloween was as funny as usual. My wife completely ran out of sweets – so she brought the pumpkin inside and went to her dance class as normal after turning off the lights.
It seems that both our next door neighbours have Grandchildren, and some of them are Artists…
The Kids Loved it and Came back with far more sweets than they started with.
No Chocolate Till Christmas
All been told not to eat sweets – just collect them
Which I think is pretty Sweet
“THE SWEET – Ballroom Blitz – Holmfirth – 11/12/21”
We don’t put pumpkins outside in the UK, pal, that’s an American thing.
Couple a roos short in the top paddock is my guess.
We do in England and you are not my pal
Please go home to the USA
In Ireland, where the custom originated, they used turnips.
Actually some do now,also over here in Europe,such is the sad US influence and marketing.
Why you linking that?
Western Civ at its best! Vig Vam Bam!!!
Dear Sylvia,
In every small plot not “developped” yet someone will build ugly constructions which will take the view, the air, the soul from the locals. I have seen it too many times. I feel sorry for you in your present state and I hope that you will find the force to ignore them. I know that it was not what you hoped for all these years and that the surroundings are important but what is done is done and you have to move on. Maybe there is another room with a window towards something else that you could use for the day and leave the old room only for sleeping. Apologies if it sounded heartless, I hope you understand it’s sincere.
I understand that. I have contemplated moving if I can’t find some sort of acceptance. But then I looked at the price of rent and houses… Acceptance is what I’m left with at this point.
Don’t move. Plant trees, damn big trees 😀
Bamboo quick growing was featured on ABC Gardening Au.
Another invasive species to cull 50 years later?
There are clumping bamboos that are non invasive.
Bamboo is one of the most useful species of plant.
Beat me to it.
“Hell is other people.”
JPS is my hero !
Or as another great philosopher, Alan J Lerner, put it:
Maybe the solution is to become other people’s hell… wait a minute… been there, done that. Not really. But I wish I had some days.
Honestly, my somewhat glib comment notwithstanding, I really do feel for you.
“New neighbor/s” is one of the world’s greatest stressors. I’m sorry that you have to deal with it. Personally, I’d rather have the owl as a neighbor. For what little they’re worth, my sincere condolences.
Hell is other people, The UK, The USA and The Unmentionables are Dropping Bombs on..Innocent Children and Mums and Dads.
IT IS DISGUSTING
For me it wasn’t next door, it was everywhere. I bought a home in a small community named Orchards, Washington back in 94. At that time, it was on a peaceful dead end street, nice community of established but not old houses, large lots, not much traffic, the whole bit. After 28 years, at the time I moved, Orchards had been incorporated into Vancouver, Washington, which itself had changed from an average suburban community across the Columbia River from Portland, OR, to an extension of Portland, which has gone to shit, simply separated by a couple bridges. The year before I moved, someone had come running thru the neighborhood firing bullets and 3 came into my house, one right thru the front window. Last night, at the Vancouver Mall, a place me, my kids, and grandkids had been to many times, there was a shooting in the food court by a masked idiot, killing one and wounding two others. So I hear ya Slyvia, and not much we can do except lament and get the hell out of there if you can.
I disagree. This is what they want. I’ve heard people suggest the same thing. I suggested they stay put and fight back should problems arise. You can guess who was trolled for suggesting this.
Understand in theory, but you evidently haven’t seen Vancouver, WA. No, I’m too old to fight that kind of thing.
I’ve lived in and around big cities. I’m still alive, unscathed both mentally and physically. If they terrorize you, terrorize them back.
Been there. That neighbor-type encroachment is an oppressive and dreaded one, profound, life altering, as you’d have to move to escape it and you have no other control. I understand your sentiment towards them, and I do and would blame those people, although within their rights as property owners.
For choosing to build what they built where they built it, in such proximity to others, to completely block their accustomed view, change their light, get so physically near that the neighbor would never be able to not be aware of them. Rights or not, legal or not, a world where people choose not to do such things, are inclined to thoughtful courtesy and good taste would be so much nicer.
Not least, too, because those inclinations would not stop at their aesthetic choices about their home.
That’s the worry. Indeed.
Does an essay like this really belong on a blog which insists all the Earth’s population could fit in Texas and still have room for their very own cattle ranches? Surely no one on this sparsely populated planet needs to build a house right next to someone else’s house.
Here’s my solution to the problem of literal next door neighbors. Every community should have its very own zoning czar who will throw sticks and stones at anyone attempting to build a house closer than a kilometer from another house. Problem solved!
Next problem?
The cheaper legal solution is a fence, 10 foot high if needed, then plants, if you have the time that is.
Not every community allows fencing anywhere but at the back of the house – and, at least in America, almost no community allows fencing at the front of the house.
I must be one of the lucky few who can put a fence in the front in needed.
Thank you. You have expressed what I have been holding—so painfully—in my heart. This happened to us, too. I thought no one could understand. You do. I’m so sorry for your tremendous loss.
Sorry to hear that Sylvia.
Have you lost ‘solar access’?
That is light from the South, the low angle winter sun.
In some parts of Australia home owners have a right to solar access when a new building goes up near an existing one. They can’t be shaded by their neighbours.
Maybe it’s time to take up the electric bagpipes, or heavy metal guitar.
Thank ya Johnny dear. I didn’t lose my solar access really. I have a bit of shady place which I rather like. It’s the view and the loss of wilderness that hurts. And privacy. Ach… I’ll get over it. Maybe.
Syl.
From the description, your neighbour may be French.
I have encountered this syndrome, Galloproxima, on a beach near Bordeaux.
We set out our towels on a deserted beach one lunchtime.
At two O’clock sharp, the silent klaxon that only real French people can hear, blared out it’s return to work message.
Immediately, from a mile away, a young French family approached and placed their towels literally touching ours.
This phenomenon can be experienced in any shop in France where the Anglo-Saxon notion of personal space is, indeed, a foreign country.
The lesson here for anyone who fanices the country life is to buy a property with some land around it so that that if there is a neighbour and they extend their property it does not affect the light and the view.
That may not be possible in a village so the other option is to buy something more rural with no neighbours away from a village or hamlet and probably as a result at a cheaper price.
Obviously, even then check the local planning laws to ascertain if any farmland or land neighbouring the property you are interested in is potentially open for change of use to building land.
In the case of Sylvia, if you can’t beat them join them. Extend her own and see how the neighbour with the monster house enjoys it.
That’s it! I need a tower!!! A huge tall tower with vats of boiling oil and catapults and all that medieval stuff. Or a drone. I think a drone. Yes. Okay. Stop it Sylvia. Acceptance. Peace. Love. Live and let live. Life is a bowl of cherry pits. This too shall pass. What is a house but a possession. We must give it all up and wander the earth or something. I must begin my journey of wandering the earth howling and scowling and fouling the air with profanities. Nobody would notice because that is pretty much the world right now anyway. But I’d feel better. Oh what to do, what to do. Redirect to love, peace and acceptance. Sigh.
I have often dreamt of installing a cauldron of boiling oil above my front door. Ideally with a delivery system based on gargoyles. (I expect you know how they got their name.)
It would solve so many problems in such a satisfying way. I should become an architect.
I’ve learned that if I buy a house with vacant land next door owned by someone else that something inhumane will be built there. In 1980s I bought a small Victorian in a low income neighborhood with same size empty lot adjoining. The owners built a house filling the whole lot but the house was entirely made of metal, ultra modern. A blight on the small, older homes in the neighborhood. The owner hung his architectural firm’s name on the front of the house. This guy had no respect for the neighborhood or any of its residents. Shortly after that I moved back to Manhattan. My parents had a bay front home in Bay Head, NJ where there were regulations in place re: height of new construction. Their neighbors built a home about 6ft taller than allowed and nothing happened to them.
Bunging money to state officials can get results.
Nothing like a horror story to tell people that moving into the country side will result in someone building some monster next door to you.
Isnt that something I would read coming from the Daily Mail?