Crazy Blonde Email Lady

I trimmed the creeping fig, in the gorgeous afternoon sun. It has turned into a monster, to be sure, but I hack at it from time to time and I manage to keep it, somewhat, at bay. I tied back the climbing rose, as it was hanging over into the laneway yet again. My bits of string with bows tied like a big fag might tie them, voila, just so, don’t seem to have longevity, who’d have thought? I really must learn how to tie knots one of these days. I even fucked it up, on school camp up at Eppalock, with handsome overseas students here on a Gap years, teaching us the art of knot tying, out in the fresh air, under the lovely blue sky, as free as a 16 year old could ever be, the handsome overseas student’s hot breath on my neck. I have never been able to tie knots. Just never. It should be on my bucket list, tie a slip knot, or a figure of 8, or some such fucken thing, before I die.

I left my roller door open. I got my girlie white plastic step ladder, I positioned it precariously on the uneven blue stone paving, and climbed up to the second highest step with my secateurs in my hand.

Buddy and Bear came out and sniffed around in the laneway initially, but then they got bored and Buddy retired to his kennel and Bear retired to the lounge room floor, half under the coffee table.

I was halfway through the maintenance, when the Crazy Blonde Email Lady, from over the back, came walking up the lane. She looks a bit like JK Rollings, but without the flush of success. Her hair isn’t as nice, straighter, lanker. She has beadier eyes, that are somehow set just a little too close together, they have a touch of the insanes about them, I don’t think she blinks enough. Her chin is a little too pointed. Her nose is just a little too long. She drags a leg. No, she doesn’t drag a leg, I just added that for dramatic effect.

She had a problem with my spa being too loud and she wrote the council guy a multiple page email complaining about my noisy spa. (Problem being, I don't have a spa)

Then she had a problem with Buddy barking in the night. She came to my door in person for that one, requesting that Buddy sleep in side. She was dismayed when I completely lost interest when she told me Buddy would bark once in the night. She proceeded to write 10 page emails to the council guy over that. The council guy didn’t say it in so many words, but he knew, that I knew, that he knew she is fucken nuts. He was nice about it, but I guess he has to be.

Then, more recently, there was the huge pile of rubbish dumped in the laneway, which had nothing to do with me. A woman came from the council and demanded to know when I was going to clean it away.

“It’s not mine.” Oh, I wonder who told her it was?

“The rubbish is not yours?” repeated the council lady, clearly she was convinced it was mine.

“No,” I said. I thought of Seinfeld. (Newman!) Crazy Blonde Email Lady! Doh!

We stood there eye-balling each other. She was clearly waiting for me to say something more, and when I didn’t, she said, “You don’t know anything about it?”

“No,” I said.

“Well…” she paused as if she was waiting for me to finally confess, and when I didn’t. “I’ll have to get somebody to clean it up.” The air was thick with the inference that my act of defiance would cost all rate payers.

“You do that,” I said.

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

Pregnant pause. She took a step away from me.

I closed the door.

I have won all the battles, Crazy Blond Email Lady has lost everyone, despite her capacity to write long emails. She tends to keep a low profile, and I hardly ever see her. I imagine her hold up in her squalid apartment, the evidenced of hoarding piles of old emails all around her, crying herself to sleep every night, G&T in hand. A thousand tears, as they say. She’d have a laptop with a cracked screen, with duct tape holding it together.

I looked around, Crazy Blond Email Lady’s eyes and mine met, she looked away, guilty, I thought, guilty of losing in life. I averted my gaze. She didn’t speak to me, I didn’t speak to her. She walked behind me, I felt a chill run up my spine when I couldn’t see her (I felt small leaves fall down the inside of my t-shirt, from the creeper overhead). She had a bag, I imagined her pulling a 30 centimetre bladed knife from her bag and plunging it into my spine. I resisted the urge to look around. I cleared my throat, though, as if I was going to speak, I couldn’t help myself, it amused me. I heard her footsteps quicken. Her roller door opened, and she disappeared behind it. I looked around when I could no longer hear footsteps. Her roller door closed again with nary a human being in sight.

I resisted the urge to imagine Bloody Face waiting inside the garage for her. It would be just too joyous to imagine his big, paw-like hands squeezing her neck hard, her eyes popping out, before her head exploded like an over ripe pimple in the dim light of the parking garage, her blood shot across the Bessa block brick work like a lightning strike. (Perhaps, I have been watching too much American Horror Story?)

My imagination went to work, as I stood on my girlie white plastic step ladder, reaching up for the bigger branches of creeper hanging over my head.

The council contact me about a multiple page complaint email she sent to them. She was triggered - so popular now a days - by my roller door being opened, it caused her all sorts of anxiety. Apparently, it stems from her childhood, when the neighbours had a vicious dog, which they would let lose by leaving their roller door open during the day.

And I have a dog, that often barks enthusiastically behind my closed roller door when she walks passed, particularly when she wheels her bins in and out. That is true, Buddy does, I hear him do that, there is something about the noise those plastic wheels make that triggers him. I tell him to be quiet if I hear him, sometimes, but not always. I want him to act as a guard dog if there are people in the laneway. I don’t encourage him, he does it naturally, but I don’t always discourage him either.

She felt anxious and vulnerable and if he’d come out, which on the day in question he would have clearly been able, she would have been terrified. It triggered all of this in her. She was asking that in future, if I was out in the laneway trimming the creeper on my wall, that I should act responsibly and I should work with my roller door closed, so as my dog is contained and not able to scare, or attack, anyone.

She wanted to know what rights she has, as I clearly wasn’t containing my dog as required under the local laws.

It really would be much more harmonious for neighbourly relations.

Yours sincerely Crazy Blonde Email Lady.


I reached up and cut the thickest of the creeper vines hanging down, pushed on by amusing thoughts, a whistle on my lips, a smile on my face. The council wrote back to her saying no, another battle lost. At last count Christian 4, Crazy Blonde Email Lady 0. The sun shone, a cool breeze blew. It really was a beautiful afternoon. It was peaceful up my ladder, even if the rose thorns spiked my hands few times. I sucked the blood from the end of my finger.

We’ve just started watching the 3rd season of American Horror Story. I laughed to myself. Three seasons in a row, is it too much?

I climbed my girlie white plastic ladder again eyeing off the next branch to cut.