There was a steady log of objections being lodged with Council, with the inevitable stream of Councillors and Aldermen strolling through our house to observe projected shadows or overhanging rafters and eaves, even possible stormwater run offs through our bedroom. No matter how much or how many objections were lodged, not once were we successful in getting a reprieve from jackhammers and nail-guns.  This was one of the reasons why we threw in the towel and retired to our over hundred acre glorious farm in 1996 with not a jackhammer within cooee ever since.

 During one of the many renovations, I’ve forgotten the exact couple, perhaps the ‘jelly all over’ neighbours, put a large sky-light in above their dining room ceiling. We objected in vain, pointing out that the sky-light was directly below the window of our son’s bedroom upstairs. If, for one reason or another, (fire perhaps?) the stairs could not be used for an escape route, he could at least get out through his window onto the single storey roof about one metre below it. The new sky-light might not carry his weight either! The sky-light would also enable us to look straight into their dining room. The objections were over-ruled when the neighbours changed the material to laminate and opaque but letting light-through polymer.

 Of course, the house was sold soon after. We sometimes saw the new neighbours at the dining table from our son Nick’s room, but apart from seeing arms scooping up food onto dishes or perhaps someone gesticulating while talking, the details were foggy and unfocussed. I had trouble even distinguishing between the sexes. It was as if looking through a cloudy milk-bottle bottom. Decades earlier and in Holland we would sometimes use these milk bottle bottoms as a primitive lens and focus the sun’s light on a shoelace until it started smouldering and then stink German teacher Kohler’s class-room out.

Anyway, the new couple had just about gotten over the jeering neighbours on the other side during the above pool wedding, with the suspended rat during the bridal waltz evening, and just when we were getting on a bit more neighbourly; She had even returned our prized hugely expensive French enamelled baking dish with lid, when the next drama occurred!

 Ronnie, who was born with the severe thalidomite effects used by his mum, had visited our son again and the age had arrived where the Commodore computer games and listening to music with the occasional bong, was now being enhanced by some beer consumption as well. Ronnie was amazingly deft with lifting his full glass with his strong teeth and with his shortened arm and splayed two fingered hand, heave it up and drink like the best of us. They were having a good time upstairs and even though the evening had arrived, it was still light.

It was about 7 o’clock pm when there was an almighty banging on the door. It was her, the neighbour of the ‘above the pool wedding and Spanish maids’, with a complaint. While having dinner at the table with friends, someone had been urinating on their roof, on THEIR skylight. She said she at first could not believe it, but when she and all the guests looked up, it was agreed by all that it was definitely not water; it was yellow!  “It was yellow,” she repeated. Almost as if she was forestalling another objection by us to Council.

I immediately went upstairs to investigate about yellow liquid but had already guessed what had transpired. Ronnie found it far more logical, if not extremely convenient as well, to use the open window to piss out to his heart’s content. The struggle for him to go downstairs would have taken too much time, and the urge was so instant. Ronnie was so sorry and said he would apologize. He struggled downstairs to our neighbour lady with the previous hanging dead rat experience. When she saw him hobbling down the stairs on his stick legs, she instantly also recognized what might have occurred. She left a bit deflated.