What a load of rubbish

Oh, how sweet the clang of steel uncoupling from steel!

The thwang of platforms and dismantled poles, the thud of clamps dropping to the grass; the joyful whoop of one scaffolder to another, the beat of a boom-box echoing down the street! Startle the sparrows! Drown out the tūī and the furious kākā! Who needs birdsong when you have this, the industrial sound of money being saved?

Yes! It’s taken six months of work by roofers, builders, painters and spouters but today, our scaffold is coming down. I mean, some of it’s going back up again (damn the old-school washhouse) but mostly the long slog is over. It feels like we’re being taken out of storage and unwrapped, like a family heirloom.

Here’s the house again, the old bird! We’d forgotten what she looked like. She’s now as crisp and green as a Granny Smith apple. The mud and shadows can give way to air and sunshine and our garden, as if cued by a conductor, can burst into bloom.

I feel silly as a kitten about this.

RIP, plucky Sprite can. I don’t know how you lasted up there all winter, in regular gale force winds - you filled up with rainwater, maybe, or became snagged in place by an imperfection in the steel. How remarkable to be bought and skulled from in April, yet only disposed of in September. Your survival is an urban miracle.

The truly wondrous thing is that your fate was entirely dealt by a random drinker of lemonade able to function ankle-deep in their own detritus, unbothered by their discarded articles, even while stepping repeatedly around them over several months at real inconvenience to themselves. What a unique skill! To steadfastly ignore such obstacles and live in the present, wholly unconcerned by past actions or future consequences! There is wisdom to this, and philosophy.

Actually, scratch unique. My husband and kids do it all the time.

A fucking chimp could do it, really.

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Dog field, Campbell Street

I had my first springtime coffee in the garden this morning, at quarter past six. The cherry is bursting its buds, a full two weeks earlier than last year. The white camellia is flowering and our unruly raised bed facing the street is yielding all sorts of new season finds. Today it was a vape canister, and a half-empty packet of Cheese and Smoky Bacon Doritos.

Last week it was the open half of an unwanted sandwich - curly lettuce, a flap of cheap ham and the perfect oval of a boiled egg. I admired that all the food groups were represented. Somebody had put thought into this sandwich.

Mind you, imagine taking four minutes to boil that egg but not five seconds to slice it. It would have looked so bulgy in the lunchbox: a distended lump swaddled in bread. Like a fatty tumour under the skin, or a snake that had swallowed a rabbit. It lacked presentation. Maybe that’s why it was slugged in our shrubbery and left to the mice and ants.

Casual disregard is pretty fascinating to me, as someone who likes things neat and organised. There’s value in the things we leave behind; archaeologists depend on the untidiest people in history. The chucking away of broken ancient crockery, the tossing of oyster shells into corners of Roman villas, the dropping of clay pipes, the losing of beads, a sandal, coins, the littering of shell casings, tobacco tins, the scattering of hairpins, pop bottles, wedding rings, keys.

Cutting back the tangle in our garden a few years ago, I found three tiny, patterned tiles, and a toppled knee-high statue of who I first thought was Christ but is probably St Fiacre. Honestly, he didn’t look quite as forgiving in the face as Jesus usually does. Plus, he was wearing a cowl and holding something indistinct, like a potted plant.

St Fiacre is the patron saint of gardeners, taxi drivers and tile-makers and is the one to pray to if you have haemorrhoids or the clap. I left him lying under a shrub because garden statuary is not to my taste, all the while wondering who had placed him there, possibly as a gesture of gratitude (for the garden? For relief from an itch?) but then forgot to take him with them when they moved. At one point, they cared. And then they stopped caring.

We underestimate picket-fence suburbs. We imagine nothing interesting happens here. But mysteries will reveal themselves, if only we part the leaves.

Monday, Lewer Street

A couple of days ago I was walking the dog past the community centre and coincided with a volunteer coming briskly out of the opshop. He was wearing an apron and clucking with annoyance.

“Somebody’s donated a stick of bread,” he said, waving a baguette in the air. It was stiff with age and he whacked it a couple of times in the hard landscaping, presumably to break it up before he binned it. He had the air of someone who’s seen it all.

Imagine being big-hearted enough to donate a box of useful goods to the hospice shop but then ruining the gesture with one dumbo inclusion. It would semaphore that you’re a good person, but also an ocean-going twat.

If this were me, donating today, my picks would be

• A pair of bright yellow loafers I thought I had the attitude to pull off. I don’t

• A blue and white glazed plate belonging to my husband’s ex

• Two angry-looking, Tang Dynasty-style ceramic horses. I don’t need them flaring their nostrils at me every day. I have tweens for that

• Our Monopoly set. The winner is always the player with the least empathy, and this should not be encouraged

• A wheel of Brie

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This was an unremarkable week. Not great for the blog, but wonderful for compliments. Last month someone asked my age and seemed disbelieving when I told her. “What is the SECRET to your SKIN?” she wanted to know. Well, I guess this is it: make sure nothing interesting ever happens.

In lean weeks I’m tempted just to hit the record button and talk out loud while I wander the neighbourhood. I don’t want to clutter up your life with pointless listening when there are so many worthy and improving options available (thanks, and also, no thanks, to daily pods from BBC Global News, The Times, and The New York Times, which never fail to inform and depress me in equal measure).

But if this could be something you’d enjoy, let me know! I could use some adult conversation.

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