Owen Jones
Penny Wise, but Pound Foolish
We bought a house in need of severe renovation or even demolition and rebuilding in Thailand eight or nine years ago. There was a small vacant plot to our right, which I thought would make a nice vegetable garden for my wife, as she loves gardening, but only grows flowers and fruit in our garden. The owners wanted £400 for it, but a friend who has been here longer than I persuaded me that it was a rip-off. So, I hummed and ahhed and someone else bought it.
However, they didn’t want it for a garden, but a house. My wife and I got on well with the mother of the household, but her husband was/is a little odd.
From the day they moved in, hubby would stand on his side of the fence, but three yards from my office window and urinate on the wall facing me. Not that he could see me, because our windows are smoked. Anyway, we had a twelve-year-old daughter at the time and didn’t think it appropriate behaviour.
Mrs. Neighbour agreed and it stopped, until she got killed in a horrific road accident when it all started again. My wife took up the battle again, but without the sensible wife, it turned into a feud, but he eventually stopped doing it again.
That was two years ago and tonight he has started doing it again.
Our daughter will finish university in Bangkok this year, so she is unaffected, but I find it rude and disrespectful. Neem however has a strong sense of smell and could smell male human urine immediately she came home tonight.
She has just gone to bed after walking up and down their side of our garden speaking obscenities with regard to lazy old men who can’t be bothered to pee in the toilet.
All in Thai and in the graveyard hush of our village at ten pm, loud enough to be heard for fifty yards in every direction.
I hope the old man’s daughter will stop him doing it again.
That’s all bad enough, but for £400 the matter would never have arisen in the first place.
Talk about penny wise, but pound foolish, eh?
On a brighter note, I finished chapter sixteen of Dead Centre II tonight.
Before the pee problem arose again luckily.
All the best,
