Sometimes when we walk home on what is knick named ‘the normal walk’ I take the quiet back roads through a residential area instead of keeping to the sea front. When this happens I tend not to put Cosmo back on his lead!
Why do I do that? I like to see how he behaves, an indicator of his attitude, his chance to have a say, as this is his opportunity to anoy me and play me up. Does he wait at kerbs, does he walk too far ahead so I have no control, or will he just randomly cross the road, or just head for the hills?
Never the later. He very very rarely crosses the road but if a cat jumps down from a gate post on the other side then he has been known to loose his self control and chase it, but then at other times he just is not interested. The most common thing he does is he just speeds up slightly at the approach to a junction and walks just around the corner out of sight for a few seconds. I am unable to see if he has brazenly crossed the road and I hurry up to find him sniffing fire hydrants, brick walls, dustbins or a clump of weeds whatever the next point of interest is on the same side as the road as me waiting to cross. I think he is getting that bit of control back and knows he has he upper hand and likes to tease me.
‘What did you think I might have crossed over’.
At the top of the hill is an intersection in a lopsided star shape of 5 roads and here I get a little nervous as it takes a long time to cross this bit as it seems so wide at this point. In the past we have ended up in the same street, just on different sides of the road!
I mention this intersection as it is here on the top of the hill there is a large characterful detached house. This house is empty and has been empty since the day we moved to the area 14 years ago. I notice the garden has been completely cleared of brambles overgrown weeds and bushes, right back to the bare soil. I have lost count of the number of sold/for sale signs that heve been put up and down over the years.
When we first moved here the house seemed just about repairable, very run down a bit of a project but something that could be brought back. It is the architypal seaside house in my imagination and if I had more money than I knew what to do with I would have bought that house and restored it back as a wonderful family home for my children to grow up in, situated at the top of a hill very close to sea. Over the years I have watched it deteriorate as bits fall off it, seen the windows boarded up and metal fencing suround it like a beware ‘dangerous building’ senario. The garden was a jungle, but something is happening here. It is very common here for property developers knock down houses to aquire the land and build several houses on the plot.
I fear that will happen here.
