There is so much grief that I put it all in a hedge; a kilometre of vibrancy that my neighbours won the right to rip out, a deal struck with my back against the wall, it was that or court and a bill upwards of £200,000. They tantrumed enough to force a day in a lawyers office, a mediation that cost us all a lot of money, their claim that their lives were threatened by the hedge’s broad brush, its waving leaves, that they could not walk down the road safely in summer to get their right-wing newspapers. Really the problem was me, who they hate, my face made into a dartboard for all their woes including abandonment, loss and rejection. Never mind that it happened to them long before they moved to this part of the world, that they were hurt long before they left me. They have channelled it into a hedge as I channel my grief and come November they swear they will send the bulldozers in, nothing will stop them. I have a champion in a friend and colleague who’s won through charm and logic the ear of two of them, but one of them holds out, determined. It’s heartbreaking that a hedge will fall foul of their pain, that vindictiveness for a suffering suffered long ago will find its way into chainsaws. It is the story of small minds and trauma and fury at a woman on a hill who won’t bow to local dinner parties, who won’t buy The Telegraph and agree all refugees are dirty. My hedge, it waves to me as I drive in and I say sorry every day. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. Maybe a miracle will happen.
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Prayers for the hedge, and for you. And for the lessening of the pain that is causing your neighbors to act like fuckwits.
This is such a sad story. So sad because of its call of truth. When sharing a boundary line with contentious neighbors, life’s luminosity dims, dims greatly, and avoiding the toxicity
Becomes most challenging.