Open Writing

Some sort of whitish lumpy powdery substance has been scattered over the road. It looks as if someone might have emptied the contents of their vacuum cleaner while sitting in a car parked just outside my house. Cars have driven over it and pressed it flat over quite a large area. The next door neighbour doesn't know what it is. We might solve the mystery by scraping a bit of it up and inspecting it closely. However, neither of us is willing to do that, in case it's something disgusting or even toxic.

Other more identifiable items are occasionally blown down the street — items such as paper bags, paper cups, hamburger containers, you know the sort of thing. We knew this would happen. Before the hamburger bar, sorry, family restaurant, opened just round the corner, we finicky old (and not-so-old) residents sent an official petition to the City Council. Our objections were rejected as having no merit.

There used to be a lot of empty pizza cartons blowing round, too. That was when a previous next door neighbour couldn't remember which tubs and bins to put out each week, and what sort of rubbish to put into them. When she moved in, I popped round in a neighbourly sort of way, as one does, to explain it all to her. I even gave her a copy of the City Council's leaflet, with coloured photos.

When it became obvious that she didn't understand the system, I went round again and, with a smile, explained what she should do. No, it didn't work. She just stuffed everything into one tub or bin, to the point of overflow. If there was a strong breeze, the overflow blew down the street. For a while, I put her pizza cartons back into the tubs. Eventually, I just picked them up and threw them onto her front lawn, without a smile. Compassion has its limits, you know.

Something much nicer is moving up and down the street this month. Spring is in the air, and birds are looking for nesting places. That includes the ducks from the lake area at the back. Each year, pairs of Pacific Black Ducks — which are brown, with a beautiful turquoise streak beneath each wing, and they're called Grey Ducks in New Zealand — waddle up and down the street and round the gardens. I have a little chat with them if they're in my garden. Feeding them white bread is, of course, dangerous and forbidden, but if I have some seedy mixed grain bread on hand I deem that to be appropriate for them, especially when they're on my front porch, waiting.

Four-footed furry predators are also in the area, but we don't see them in the street now. Evidence of nocturnal visits by foxes can occasionally be found. Two cats, from different houses, used to prowl in daylight hours and during the evening, looking for feathery victims. One is now old and less mobile and stays at home; the other hasn't been seen for a few years. Thank goodness for that. Cats and foxes are killers of birds and native animals.

The most unwelcome users of the street, however, are drivers who use it as a short cut. It's a crescent, leading in a curve from one main road to another. That's too much of a temptation for folk who think they can avoid waiting at the traffic lights where the main roads intersect. So they come hurtling round our crescent. If I'm driving home from the shops and see one of them, in my rear view mirror, I drive safely at below the speed limit of 50kph and switch my indicator on well before I reach my house. That forces the pests to slow down and it defeats the object of their exercise, ho ho.

Otherwise, it's a nice quiet little crescent. But I'd really like to know what the whitish stuff is.

© Copyright Brian Barratt 2009