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Thursday, August 20, 2009

They have to be told!



There are aspects of the behaviour of some children who do things wrongly or inappropriately because no one has told them that what they are doing is unacceptable. Take, for example the way that one should eat freshly cooked asparagus or the way one should eat one’s soup. There is still a delicious thrill of guilt that I have when I am using my fork “like a shovel” – I can hear the admonitions of my parents still! But some people make heinous errors simply because their mistakes have not been pointed out to them.

So it could be the case that our obstreperous neighbours are simply waiting for someone to tell them to behave with some consideration and everything will be fine.

Our neighbours are remarkable. They live their lives in the full glare of everyone else’s hearing. They have created a room outside and under their house with sofas, a table and, above all a television. This can be turned on at any point in the day or night and the tinny sound of empty Spanish broadcasting can be heard augmented by the assorted voices of the raucous family.

Their day starts late with the communal shout at The Daughter. She, I have to say is well worthy of anyone’s opprobrium as (according to the parental voices which carry throughout our neighbourhood) she is consorting with disreputable company; she is near to taking drugs again; she doesn’t get up; she doesn’t eat etc etc.

The daughter gives as good as she gets and I would not soil the electronic impulses of this blog by repeating what this dysfunctional family chooses to call itself.

Sometimes the “discussions” are accompanied by the sound of crashing crockery and, at one point, what we took to be a telephone. They are always accompanied by the robust slamming of doors which test even the remarkably solid concrete construction of the typical Spanish house.

The father of the household, himself a buffoon who sings fascist songs in the swimming pool, accompanies the women of his household as they scream imprecations against each other by acting like a Greek chorus chanting (in Spanish of course) “Every day! Every day! Every day!” He sometimes alternates between this and “Always! Always! Always!”

We are counting the days when these over-moneyed ignoramuses leave their ‘holiday home’ and return to plague another neighbourhood!

Our next visitors have now sorted out their separate travel arrangements (one is arriving from London the other from Nice) and they should both be in Castelldefels by about seven in the evening. Just in time for dinner!

Because of the extended nature of our moving in to the house, it has happened that each new set of visitors has seen a slightly different version of our living space. Although the major move was complete by the end of July, further refinements have been made throughout the month of August. On the working philosophy of “Every little helps” (Tesco) and “Anything is better than nothing” (Desperation) we strive towards a theoretical ‘completion’. Even if our visitors see no advance (it is after all their first visit) we can see what we have done and take pleasure in it!

The more mundane necessities of preparing the room for our next guests call and our more ambitious projects will have to wait until we have stocked up on milk and other necessities.

Oh, and by the way, if you are wondering whether we have done anything to ‘teach the children better behaviour’ Toni threatened to call the police when the girl and her cronies were left alone in the house and shouted their way into the small hours.

The ‘lesson’ hasn’t taken though. Pity.

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