The West

I had the pleasure of having to sit in Merrylands high street for a full thirty minutes today. I had to get passport photos and needed to wait for them to develop.

I planted myself on a bench outside the camera shop with a spinach and cheese Lebanese bread and a can of creaming soda and settled in for a little bit of people watching. After a very short time I selected my theme...
...spot the employed person.

I think I came up short.

I saw lots of dark hairy men in shorts and singlet t-shirts leading women covered from head to foot in dark unpatterned cloth pushing prams and dragging wailing kids.
Teenage girls in skirts so short you could see the curve of the buttocks, bare legs with platform heels with six inch heels and Ed Hardy’s riding above the muffin top.

Shuffling men with dirty clothes, no shoes and fungal toenails.

The stock standard suburban old folks wearing muumuus and dragging wheeled trolleys over the unsuspecting toes.

But the highlight of the watching was a Mother and Daughter pair. Mum was wearing an aqua t-shirt dress that should have, and in fact could have been, a nightie, she had a bleach blonde birds nest on her head and more make-up than the Revlon counter. Her pre-teen daughter had her puppy fat still intact was wear a cap-sleeve shirt and short shorts with ‘babe zone’ across her arse.

I don’t think I saw anyone employed but still on holidays. I think I was amongst the reason the west has a bad reputation.

Leave It OuT!

Today is bin day. At some ungodly dark hour this morning a man in a truck drove down my street and tipped the rubbish that I, and others, had gathered over the last week into the back of his rather noisy vehicle.

Last night I pulled the general rubbish (food scraps, dry cleaner wrappers, pizza boxes etc.) out to the road side, followed by the recycling bin (tins, paper, cardboard). Garden rubbish goes out next week, if there is any. The roadside is about seven feet from my front gate, it is a pretty manicured grassy area which I mow or have mowed on a regular basis. I look after it.

When I left for work this morning I left the bins out, I'll pull them in when I get home. My morning schedule doesn't have room for faffing about with wet rubbish bins.

However, I know that when I get in my bins will be sitting on my front lawn. They will have been moved from the roadside and put on my front garden. I can't explain why this p*sses me off. but it does. Every time it happens. And it happens every week!
It has been suggested to me that it's harmless.
It has been suggested to that whoever does this is trying to be helpful
It has been suggested to me that it helps the streetscape look it's best

I don't see it in any of these ways.

I see it as interfering
I see it as rude and unnecessary, in fact I see it as trespassing, GET OFF MY LAWN!
As for the streetscape, I see several other bins in the street as I walk home waiting for owners that have the misfortune to work during the day. Plus, the neighbours to my left haven't mowed the lawn or roadside for months, so the streetscape is pretty much stuffed before my bins sits there for a few hours after being emptied.

I won't say anything of course...

But, really that's because the culprits wouldn't understand a word I was saying anyway.

Carrion

A couple of weeks ago I got a leaflet through the door warning me of the upcoming date for the neighbourhood ‘leave your rubbish for us to pick up’ day.

This is a scheme that local councils have put in place to try and curb dumping; in turn you leave your stuff on the curb. It happens once every three months and mostly, I think it works. A lot of the stuff gets collected by charity organisations who, at other times of the year tell you to get stuffed if you ask them to collect. The recyclables get recycled and the rubbish, well, that goes to landfill. However, much of the stuff left out never get to its intended destination, as there is an element of society that thrives of picking through others refuse and taking it, and no doubt, selling it for their own profit.

I had a few things in mind that really needed to go out. Not rubbish perse, just things I don’t need or want anymore and I was getting fed up with having in the garage. A queen divan bed and mattress (yes, I could have sold it, but it had ten years of marks on it, yuck), an arm chair, a few old Singer sewing machines that used to be used for display when I had the shop (tried museums and second hand store, no one wanted them) and a pile of flat packed cardboard boxes.

I spent yesterday morning making a neat pile on the verge outside my house, then popped out to get a few groceries. The sewing machines were gone when I got back.

Later in the day, I went to the movies. When I got back the mattress was missing.

The amazing disappearing items meant I could put something else out. You’re only supposed to put out 1cubic metre. So I moved a few things around in the lounge and put the sofa out there, don’t panic I have another, better one in storage (remnants of married life).

At 3.30 this morning I was awoken by male voices outside my bedroom window. At least three men were chatting loudly, I couldn’t understand a words, but judging by the laughing and high spirits, no doubt fuelled by a few, they were having fun. Then I heard the clatter of casters as they hit the road. I fingered a gap into the blinds and peered out the window to see the three men pushing the bed base down the road like a toboggan before jumping on it. Despite being unimpressed about being woken up at such an hour, I couldn’t help but smile.

Note to self: if I ever leave a divan bed out again, take the casters OFF!

This morning as I walked to the station, I couldn’t help but notice the previously neat piles outside other house, where no longer in order. Clearly each pile had been the pilfered and ended as a feeding ground for the Council Clean Up Crows.



- Not my pile of leavings, but an example of what it looks like after the good, big stuff has been taken.

Realisation

Just over a year ago I moved house. I moved from a little two bedroom cottage in the inner city to a three bedroom colonial double brick place and reduced my rent in the process. I didn’t really want to move, but after I had the affront to ask the landlord to fix a leaking roof I was asked to leave.

The blessing in disguise has worked out quite nicely really. Puss has a garden to roam around in. I rattle around a night and weekends deciding whether I should sit in the office, the lounge, the bedroom or out in the deckchair on the patio. It’s quiet (except when the mad Polish woman over the back fence is telling her tenant to f*ck off) and I only have a three or four minute walk to the railway station, better still, a six minute walk to the best kebab in the world. I like my house, it feels like home and I’ve just signed another two year lease on the place.

Last night however, there was a drive by shooting.

This latest act of violence is just one of the many law breaking events from the past twelve months that have rocked Merrylands, a multi cultural community just south of Parramatta, west of Sydney.

There has been drive-bys, robberies, a machete attack in a school and even a lady so drunk she drove her car into a Starbucks.

The thing that concerns me most about all this, is that I’ve come to realise, I’m on the road to becoming a Westie!