Residents of a leafy English street were shocked last night after hostilities between two neighbours broke out into open warfare.
The trouble started when Mr. Smith, of 27 Balfour Street, started stealing fruit from the apple tree belonging to his neighbour, Mr. Jones of 29 Balfour Street.
And then one morning Mr. Jones and his family awoke to discover the Smiths had erected a concrete wall along the border between the two properties , crucially encroaching onto the Jones property and taking in the apple tree, outhouse and garden shed, previously belonging to the Jones family.
Mr. smith said, “Well, we need the room and extra living space and, obviously, food to feed our growing family. After all, we’re entitled, innit?. I can’t see the problem, myself.”
Things became increasingly heated when the Smiths began commando-style raids over the barrier onto the Jones’s garden, eventually beating and holding the Jones children in captivity.
From there, the Smiths moved the concrete barrier closer and closer to the Jones house and then when bulldozers came crashing over his lawn, Mr. Jones said, “We’d had enough. The cheeky bastard actually got a loud hailer and announced he was giving us five hours to get out before he bulldozed our gaff! Our Cheryl was proper upset. We’d just had a conservatory built and the misuses loved it. Got her a little TV in there, used to watch her soaps and that. Now it’s gone. Them Smith fuckers lobbed petrol bombs at it! What a facking liberty eh? Milk bottles filled with lighted petrol, for Gawd’s sake! ‘course we couldn’t take that, could we? Kids were firing water pistols over their wall and me and me eldest were using pea-shooters.”
A spokesman for the local authority expressed sorrow at the violent turn of events and said he hoped a solution could be found. In the meantime, he condemned the violence used by the Joneses and said the council fully supported the Smiths’ right to defend themselves…
Harry Paterson
