Our Street...

Humans are strange.

Firstly, I am not allowed to run around outside. I am a dog. Dogs run about outside. I ran around outside. Oh, I was popular this morning. I can tell you.

Secondly, I have to sit still. Even if the Pud is winding me up...

What's in it for me?

Nothing.

Not even a biscuit.

Anyway, this is our street. Looks idyllic doesn't it? And it is. But looks can also be deceiving.

I was fiddling on Blipfoto this morning and I came across Kendallishere's One Street and I thought it might be just the ticket to keep me going for a few weeks.

To get back to our street - it is in fact an unmade road. This seemed a marvel to me when I first moved here from the city - that we had a road and it was unmade and it didn't belong to anyone and it ran below our house and no-one really came this way. What could be better? And the privacy it affords is excellent - but, sadly, it is also a bit of a liability.

Why?

Because it is unmade and it belongs to no-one which means that no one has to bother looking after it which means that it is often the repository for all sorts of junk dumped without thought. I found a fridge down here once. And the back of a Land Rover. I mean the whole thing...

At the top of this unmade road is an industrial unit owned by a man who is unspeakably unpleasant - perhaps you get them in all villages? He is a bully. The bit of fence you can see is the final bit of our land, called the nib, the extra bit, and we were required to fence it before being able to take over its rental. The man at the top of the road came steaming down and demanded we take the fence down. He doesn't own the land, or the unmade road, doesn't even come this way very often and never with his car (and you could get a bus down, if you wanted!) and he thought shouting would be the way to succeed with its removal. He could give no reason why he wanted it removed but somehow it seemed to have affronted his sensibilities. He didn't reckon on Snotty though. Bullying tactics butter no parsnips, let me tell you.

Anyway, we weren't intimidated and the fence remains. That was three years ago. The land we rent is in trust, and the Trust demanded the fence. So that is what the Trust got. Our friend from the Industrial unit is not the Trust. I know that others have been intimidated by him and changed things to accommodate him. Not us! :)

The first week we lived here, the rains came. Water - you've never seen the like. Down the far end of this unmade road, there is a little stream and it swelled to take up most of the road turning it into a river; the water moving at speed and taking everything in its way. We had wellies on, but the water came up to the tops. On our journey - we were going to see the Industrial rushes and lend a hand to those suffering flooding up on a side of a hill (!) - a woman came wading past us! "Have you seen my flip flops?" she asked.

They were long gone.

I love this area - I love the fact that it is not perfect and that it is the sort of place where characters abound. It's a little bit mad. Of which more, later.

On this street things change by the day. And this is the one street I can get Maud out on...