Monday's painting...

...Not much sleep last night...
Why?
My next door neighbour (the horrible one, who totally ignored lockdown restrictions...) had his Xmas lights installed yesterday. It was a noisy Sunday with barbecue and extended family around. I took my processor off yesterday to get peace and quiet. 
However, when dusk fell, Blackpool Illuminations began. It permeates every corner of my bungalow. This year is an incredibly colourful display. I go in my bathroom and there is an alternately flashing red and yellow lights, and my brain immediately thought 'fire'. My stomach felt sick and then I realised it was his new flashing lights along the bungalow gutters. In my bedroom I see other flashing lights and displays. In my kitchen I can see all manner of light fantastic displays, and displays with moving floodlights. In my living room window the same. I have curtains in the front window, but it still creeps through the tops of the curtains and displays on my ceiling...

I have no curtains in the bathroom (it is not possible to put any in there). I did try one year to try and block the outside of the bathroom windows, but I don't have the dexterity or mobility to do that daily. 

My bedroom curtains I do not close now, because I don't have the dexterity to close them. That is fine for 10 months of the year because I can then watch the night sky every night, and I love watching the stars. 

I have tried closing them with a stick, but it is not easy, hurts my hands and arms badly. And in any case the intrusive Xmas display from next door comes through them. I cannot put a thicker black out curtain up, even if I were able to, because the door glass window is not wide, and a thicker curtain barely draws back to allow daylight through in day time. Last year I tried each night, to go out side, the door opens into the garden, and put something over the door and close it. But oftentimes it is rainy and windy and I got soaked and cold and aaaggghhhh.

Have I had a word with him. Yes I did. But he told me in his usual unfriendly manner to h3££ off. Even though I tried to explain it exacerbates my visual migraines etc.

Last night, I tried my blackout eye mask to try and sleep. But I couldn't sleep with it on. Then I tried a scarf round my eyes and head, but I felt like an unknown soldier facing a firing squad, and my dreams took a sinister turn. Finally I got out of bed just before midnight. I was wide awake. Then on the dot of midnight the Blackpool lights went out...

But it was too late, I was wide awake...

I have been tidying up all my computer stuff, leads, equipment, updated stuff, got rid of unused apps, etc etc etc etc....
I now have a tidy cupboard...

As I was writing this, I have alerts from the neighbourhood group for this area on all kinds of stuff...one has just come on the top of my screen (while I am writing this) saying this guy has just come back just now from walking the dog and a strange man was urinating outside their house and his wife was horrified at the window...don't know the rest of this, I need to log into the app...

Beautiful neighbourhood this, isn't it...

Right back to to the idiot next door. He has to have the biggest and best Xmas display of lights and moving light decorations each year. He always sets out to outdo every other bungalow display in this cul-de-sac. And he annoys others with the amount of lights and display, and with the length of time he has the lights on at night. 

Nothing I can do about these UFO lights flashing all through the next two months. I have tried before. I have tried officially. 


The weather is supposed to be nice and sunny this week. That means I can carry on cutting down the garden and branches off trees...

I checked the weather app. It promises sunshine from dawn to dusk today. 

So, I am thinking. Well, my horrible neighbour had workmen for his driveway and garden, and the roof being replaced for weeks and weeks and weeks last year, it was never ending, and they were working from 7am many days....and I had to move my car from my driveway daily into the road because of all the dust, cement, soil and debris that came over my car. So I had to be up very early each day to move it.

The wood shredder is coming out of the garage. I have plenty of cut branches already in a huge pile. I was going to somehow get them to the tip, but one of those alerts from the online neighbourhood group for this area said that because the road to the tip is very short from the main road, and they are social distancing the cars as well, and consequently you cannot queue on the main road, and the workmen there make you move on, so you are driving round and round trying to get into the tip. That is not doable for me. So, wood shredder it is....

I do have a circuit breaker for it....


It was beautiful when I went out at sunrise, but absolutely freezing because of a hard frost in the night.

I got my wood shredder up and working. But my fingers were frozen, and so I came in to warm up.

But not before I'd had an idea. My bamboo is nice and thick (for canes next year), and it needs thinning, and cutting down somewhat before we have a wet snow. Bamboo with heavy wet snow on it, gets pushed to the ground. And can break and flatten any structure in its path. The bamboo however, once the snow melts, returns back to upright again. I know this, because it flattened a pagoda I had spent weeks and weeks that summer in my garden. :(

I have just cut some bamboo right down to the ground, and pre-tested my idea a bit, which is self-explanatory (I hope in my painting for today).

If you can't beat them, then join them. This will face his kitchen door and window. He has Xmas decorations (his intrusive flashing Xmas lights), then I will have Xmas decorations. No Xmas lights on mine however. Just a barrier of colour and shapes and tinsel and baubles, which will be added to, until no flashing lights reach my bedroom window...

It was me saying to myself this morning, I can't do a thing about these flashing lights yet again from my horrid neighbour, BUT the rebel stirred up inside me, and said YES YOU CAN!

(Did I ever tell you about a teacher who whacked my head several times with the side of a ruler when I was about 5 years old? I was still in infant school then, and I was in the class for children who were backwards. I sobbed all day, my head was banging in pain. I didn't have the speech then to tell my parents, I hadn't been taught how to speak then. I was powerless. The next day I crept into the woodwork room. We had real children's sized saws, hammers, and nails in those days. I sawed the back legs of the teacher's chair as far as I was able. Hid the saw back in my skirt, and returned it to the woodwork room. 

And went back outside in the playground. The teacher rang the brass handbell and we all stood in line and filed into the classroom. Then she sat on the chair. One leg collapsed, and she fell...

No one in the classroom dared laugh, and neither did I. The other children in the class had no speech, or not much speech. So she couldn't prove anything. No one had seen me do it, so no one looked in my direction.

Now, if my spirited 5 year old self can do this, what business have I saying to myself at 71 years old that I am powerless? ).