SMASHING POTS

Two incidents have recently occurred involving one of the plant pots that we keep at the front of our tiny little terraced house to try and make the environment around these grim northern parts just ever so slightly prettier.

The first was during the late March gales when a large and seriously hefty pot, containing a smallish Bay Tree, managed to get blown over a few times. Each time it did, I would set it back in place, and be amazed at how such a heavy pot full of soil and containing a tree could be so easily be blown over by a gust of wind.

I would then look worriedly towards the house and wonder what else could fall off it if the wind was blowing strongly enough to do that...

Anyway, during this prolonged spell of inclement weather, we arrived home one evening and found that the pot had been smashed to pieces and all of the parts had been carefully placed in a pile by a passing stranger who obviously didn't want anyone to get hurt.

We had a momentary flash of anger about the loss and the possibility of having been the victims of an act of minor vandalism (although I did have to point out at that point how many times it had blown over and had to be righted recently), before picking up our little Bay Tree and plonking it inside an available plastic pot and then planning to re-pot it later, whenever we manage to get hold of a replacement pot for it.

We still haven't managed that yet, by the way, but the Bay seems to be thriving as well as it could be expected to under the circumstances.

Now I'm not saying that we should have any "trust issues" with our nearest neighbours, although we had previously noticed that one of the many plastic pots we'd left outside had been planted up by them presumably after having blown in their direction, although (and this is where it starts to get tricky), we may very well have donated it once to their lovely predecessors...

Our collective memory, especially when it comes to the tinier details, can be a tricky thing...

It's not that we minded it being recycled, if indeed, that's what it was, but it would have been nice to be asked first.

Later on, when the weather improved and I arrived home in daylight, that very same neighbour would explain what had happened, and how the pot had rolled off the step and shattered on the pathway, and how they had put the pieces where we had found them, and weeks of suppressed and misplaced anger were immediately transformed into feelings of guilt, because I really can't give myself any respite on such things...

A couple of months later, I arrived home on a sunny afternoon after yet another hospital visit and was chatting with my beloved on the doorstep when she noticed that the pile of broken pieces of pottery were nowhere to be seen, and she asked me what had happened to them, to which I had no answer.

Luckily for me, because I really did not want to be the person who got sent to knock on doors and ask what had happened to some old bits of broken plant pot, one of the neighbours emerged from his own front door as she was still looking and she was able to ask him directly if he knew what had happened, explain that she used them as "crocks" in the bottom of other pots, and he was able to return the bag of broken bits that he had tidied up and put in the rubbish...

Slight sense of guilt at not being tidier...

Slight sense of rage at the impertinence of it...

Slight sense of irritation at this growing sense that everything outside our row of houses is owned collectively...

Sight sense of annoyance at the presumption...

Slight sense of self-loathing at this reaction to something where someone obviously thought that they were doing us a favour...

Slight sense of worry that perhaps they think that we are lowering the tone by leaving our rubbish outside...

Oh God...

Maybe it's us...

Maybe we are the neighbours from hell...?