grrr!

Thanks for the comments Amy and Kaybar - I didn't see the GD episode but I can well imagine! The liquidator thing is still going on; the only crumb of comfort is that we definitely won't have to pay them unless the defects are made good...! (I didn't know you were in Wimbledon Amy - I drove through Wimbledon today to take the kids to a party at Deen City Farm - I'd never heard of it before we got the invitation but it was great - the kids loved it!)

More property stress this week. Like lots of houses round here, the Worst House is very hemmed in by other houses, as we have neighbours either side and our garden backs straight onto the side of another house, the first one in another row of houses at right angles to ours. I have never minded this as we had plenty of privacy from the mature trees in the gardens either side. However this morning the neighbours who rent the slightly grotty ground floor flat on our right have suddenly for some inexplicable reason hacked down two beautiful trees at the end of their garden - a mature elderflower and a lovely holly tree. They provided us with shade, privacy and beautiful flowers and berries. Instead we now have a view of a brick wall, our other neighbour's first floor bathroom window ( thankfully frosted, although it still makes us feel overlooked) and some sorry hacked off stumps that yesterday were beautiful trees. I could weep. I just don't know why they've done it - they never use the garden, and as a rubbish 1970s flat conversion means only their loo looks out onto it they can't exactly claim they were spoiling their view or light. It also means the magnolia tree I planted 18 months ago to shield the one gap that was left is now in the wrong place.

It was only on Friday that I was congratulating myself on not having to spend any money on the garden this year, having had it all professionally sorted out last summer. I must have jinxed it...!

I have gone online tonight ( very romantic on Valentine's Day!) to order a mountain ash to plant strategically - they are supposed to be good for small urban gardens, pollution resistant and not too invasive, and as this one will arrive 10 feet high it should provide us with a bit of instant privacy. We'll probably have to move the magnolia to fit it in, which is a potential disaster as they don't always transplant very well. Aggh. London living. Makes me want to sell up and move to the country!



The garden last May, complete with the elderflower in next door's garden shielding us from the end wall. All now hacked down ( and to add insult to injury half the branches have ended up in my garden!) Tomorrow I'll try to bring myself to take a picture of the grim view we now have of a brick wall and a loo window.