Head in the clouds or feet on the ground?

You may remember from a previous blog that I have a slight issue with snow. Or, to be more accurate, snow has an issue with me and it goes out of its way to stalk me, to lay traps, to strike at me from the darkness, to send me threatening emails, to text me at 3 o’clock in the morning and to generally make my life a misery. Okay, I admit, slight exaggeration with some of those things but not by a great deal. Snow and I have a had a long relationship with many ups and downs and of late, there have been more downs that ups.

However, even I have to admit that snow does have its good points. For one thing, it covers a multitude of sins, literally. I’m walking outside every day for a couple of hours and I have to admit that there have been many occasions when I’ve realised that the glittering coat of ice and snow all over the world has given it a veneer of beauty and freshness, something similar to an aging B-List celebrity going in for expensive plastic surgery. You know that nothing has really changed, that you’re still looking at the same person, but somehow they don’t seem to be as grating and annoying,.

When I’m out and about in an area I know well and the snow is covering the ground, many of the little things that annoy me are hidden and, as the old saying goes, out of sight out of mind. It is in my case anyway, there are so many things that annoy me that I can only focus on a few of them at a time and if some of them are hidden away from me then I can easily over-look them. I may not forgive easily, but I do forget at the drop of a hat.

Anyway, the snow melted in my part of the world about a week ago. At least most of it did, there are still a few patches of grubby ice kicking around. And, as the snow melted the terrain underfoot became visible once more. In the local park, this wasn’t an issue, there were paths, ponds, grass, the usual sort of things. The park ius very well maintained and there are people working in it almost constantly, so it’s a nice place to visit, to wander around in. Photogenic even. But, the snow also cleared away from the streets of the estate that I live in and that could be no stretch of the imagination ever be considered to be a photogenic place. Unless you count those pictures you see on the BBC Website of the urban disaster areas.

Apart from the layer of muddy grit which the snow had left behind, the streets are back to normal. Instead of a covering of snow, they have a covering of junk food boxes, broken bottles and crushed cans, bookie pens, dog crap and for some reason which I haven’t quite been able to understand, parts of furniture, such as drawers and cupboard doors and things like that. Paints itself a very pleasant image, doesn’t it? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe for one second that where I live is anywhere worse than any similar sort of place, but it doesn’t do much to give you a sense of community spirit or pride of ownership.

A lot of the rubbish lying around you expect. We live within a stone’s throw of both a McDonald’s and a KFC so fast food cartons are to be expected. There is a bookie nearby as well, so those tiny little pens that they have are scattered everywhere. Seems to be a never ending supply of them. Lots of people in the estate have dogs and very, very few clean up after them so yeah, dog crap every ten feet is not pleasant, but hardly comes as a shock. There are some things which are less easy to explain, or at least they are less easy for me to understand.

The bits of broken furniture confuse me. If they were entire shelf units that had been dumped at the side of the street then that would make a kind of sense. But it’s not, instead it is just single parts of cupboards or desks or shelves. One lonely cupboard door sitting in the middle of the pavement, surrounded by dog crap, fag butts and crushed Tennetts Lager cans. Where did it come from, where is it going to, where is the rest of the cupboard? Why is it on my pavement? Is it a message of some kind, a warning from an unknown guardian angel? Or could it be a secret code to unearth the greatest secrets of the past.

Or could it just be a bit of junk that someone has abandoned and the drunks and junkies have moved for some reason that makes sense only to them?

I’ve met some of the people who live in this area and they all seem like decent enough types. But the community as a whole is, well actually it’s pretty non-existent. Everyone keeps themselves to themselves and doesn’t get involved in anything that doesn’t directly concern them. There is no estate factor or group to oversee maintenance and the likes so no one is willing to do anything that affects the area as a whole . Rubbish piles up, vandalism becomes more common and property prices drop. And more importantly, I’ve got a pretty high chance of getting dog crap on my shoes whenever I go out.

So, despite it going against everything I know to be true, I’d be quite happy to see the snow come back for a while. Just to give the area that appearance of being clean.

Thankfully, we’re going to be moving out of this place soon and I will have to find something else to become irritable about.

Before I go, if you happen to see any furniture roaming the streets looking for their lost doors or drawers, let me know. It would be an act of kindness and generosity to put the media unit back in touch with it’s lost shelf or give the bathroom cabinet back the missing mirror.