Neighbour, who lives one floor below us, had friends this weekend. This isn’t news in itself, but for Neighbour, it’s the first time we’ve seen her be sociable. She’s the type who has ordered red and white geraniums on her balcony, grow bags with equally dull-looking flowers poking out, a small garden trowl, and - to top off her staid, middle-aged image - a pair of Crocs. So, it was lovely for Boyfriend and I to spy on her throwing a mini tea party. Three of them sat around the balcony plastic table on padded chairs supping tea and tucking into a delicious looking strawberry tart probably from the bakery up the road. Yum. We were hanging out the washing at the time, mulling the idea of ‘dropping’ a sock, catching their attention and winning an invite to their tea party - to no avail.
Neighbour probably doesn’t think so much of Boyfriend and I anyway. She probably holds a few grudges against us for what could have become a full scale balcony war.
Henri, our bayleaf tree who is just beginning to sprout new growth incidentally, started it. Being a demanding plant, he needed water. So water him we did. Only to find that about half a litre of water started falling through the wooden balcony slats in a steady drip, drip, drip, right in front of her patio entrance doors. At least it wasn’t onto a strawberry tart.
Next, we had a party. It wasn’t the noise so much as the various bits of food, paper plates and cocktail sticks that managed to find their way from our balcony to hers that was the problem.
Then came the final straw - the lettuce leaf. I had decided that a good way to dry lettuce to make a salad was to shake the leaves dry, sort of over the balcony. I started shaking a little more rigorous than required, and suddenly, one leaf broke and flopped down onto the clothes drying rack below, hanging there like a pair of green knickers. The next morning we found a suspiciously similar lettuce leaf on our balcony, along with one white rubber glove. What did that mean? How did we deserve that one?
Boyfriend and I doubt the balcony wars are over yet. The time will come when a pair of Boyfriend’s boxer shorts get blown by the wind downstairs, or the mini rugby ball we sometimes chuck around gets lobbed down there…I wonder what she would retaliate with?
Tags: boxer shorts, cocktail sticks, Crocs, lettuce, rubber gloves, strawberry tart, wind
