Can someone tell me why, when some people see a vacant piece of land, they feel an irresistible urge to treat it like their personal rubbish tip?
My mother has a block of land that she bought two years ago, after many years of saving*. She still has to save a little more money before she can build her dream house on it.
Every few weeks, we go to the site to check that everything is OK (you never know, you might turn up one day and find fertility cult weirdos have erected a giant Wicker Man on your property). We also have to clear any tall grass and other flammable matter before mid-November, to comply with council regulations. The council is very strict about this, and so they should be, with bushfire season looming.
Last week, we discovered that the neighbours behind us have been generously tipping their lawn clippings over the fence. There is now a five-foot-tall pile of dried grass clippings on our side which is just the right size and shape for budding arsonists. How thoughtful of them!
For several minutes we huddled and deliberated: should we shut up and accept it as something we had no control over? Or should we toss the heap back over the fence into the bosom of its rightful owners (preferably with some dog poo mixed in**)?
Sometimes civilisation can be such a drag. If we were living in Ye Olden Days I would have just waited for the pile to get high enough for us to climb the fence, storm their grounds, plunder their booty, and enslave their women.
In the end we decided that two wrongs didn’t make a right, but my mother said that the next time she saw that neighbour (her children were happily romping outside, but we didn’t see her at all the whole time we were there. I'd like to think she was inside rubbing ashes into her hair and rocking herself with shame), she was going to make a remark about nice and flat their lawn was looking, using her most sarcastic tone of voice.
Yeah, that would learn 'em.
Other people have freely dumped their rubbish on the block from time to time. To date, we have found: a street sign, someone's mailbox (sorry, No. 58), tree prunings, old pipes, and a colourful assortment of building waste.
We're not the only ones that this has happened to. My friend is building a house in a new estate, but due to unforeseen (aren't they always?) delays, her block has remained vacant for longer. The other builders have taken this as an open invitation to dump their rubbish on her land.
The pile of rubble became so large that when the surveyors came out, they included it in their diagram.
I wonder if these people, who so freely pass the responsibility for their waste onto others, are the same breed who throw rubbish out of their cars, or leave their paper cups on window ledges, or carelessly drop their chip packets on people’s lawns when they walk past.
I wonder what kind of example they are setting for their children.
I wonder if one day, I can get Instant Death Ray goggles***.
*I know, SAVING. Wow, what a quaint and novel idea!
**Oh, I dream about doing these things, but in the end I'm just too darn nice.
***Or at the very least, Extreme Discomfort goggles.