Diary of an up and coming sociopath

I often suspected that the neighbours here were quite clearly in the bracket of humanity I’d consider “dispensible”. A mixture of utterly incorrect personal and social priorities and no respect for people and property. A will to neglect everything. Often, these families are poor and disadvantaged, but I tend to feel that’s a symptom rather than the cause. Plenty of other poor and disadvantaged families manage fine without raising criminals and having shouting matches on the doorstep with half the local community. To be fair, these are hardly neighbours from hell - if nothing else, they generally keep out of our way. However, even soon after we’d moved in, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to bring myself to like them - they’re the epitome of everything my personal philosophies aren’t, and no matter how liberal I might want to be there are some ideologies that are just incompatable. It wasn’t just the fact that they consider Tobacco and Sky TV a basic need - despite being poor, that the kids never seem to be at school, or that the husband is unemployed, (besides being an immigrant of suspect legality). It wasn’t even just the fact that the mother of the family, who works at the local Tescos, can’t press her till keys proplerly because her fingernails are too long, or that she has a voice that sounds like it’s been through a cheesegrater due to what can only be charitably described as “heavy smoking”. No, what really clinches the deal for me, the thing that really make me realise that this family is clearly representative of my most disliked social group, was the fact that yesterday, I was forced to negotiate one of them off our fucking roof.

Picture, if you will, the scene. Ian and I were sitting here, watching the final episode of Angel. As the action reached a climatic point, Ian asked me to pause it, and ran upstairs. I was unsure of just what could cause such a reaction, right in the middle of this epic battle, when out of the corner of my eye I noticed a shadow move past the skylight. Not just a small shadow, oh no, it was definitely human shaped. It now occurred to me that Ian had heard the footsteps of these suspected race of roof people, and gone upstairs to check they weren’t trying to steal his DVDs again. I follwed him up, and he informed me that through his curtains he had seen a local youth strolling casually about MY OWN ROOF. We could see them on the house next door, climbing in and out of their window. Unwilling to leave them to it, yet unable to prove anything, we decided to sit and just wait for them to try it again. My understanding of the unwanted nuisance was good, and soon enough a young boy again walked out over our roof. But this time, I was ready for him. Immediately, he saw us. I recognised him as one of the utterly disgusting little shits from next door. In retrospect, I wish I’d had a camera waiting, to have captured the look on his face. A look of fear mixed with the reluctant acceptance of his fate. He froze in his tracks, a reaction you’d you’d expect from someone caught gallavanting about on another person’s roof.

I assumed my most adult pose, threw open the window, and inquired of him: “What the fuck are you doing on our roof?!” He just kind of mumbled back at me, so increasing slightly in volume, I expressed, (almost disturbingly…) channelling my own father to do so, what he should’ve inferred from the previous tone. “Get off now, else I’ll be having a brief word with your parents about this.” Presumably, when your parents are the utter dregs of society, this is either the kind of threat which would lead to him getting a severe beating, or be utterly meaningless, since the parents don’t care enough to discipline him. Either way, it seemed to work and he clambered hastily back into the window, never to return. I admit, I was hoping he fell to his death just to teach him a lesson, but I’ll settle for having imposed some order on his orderless life. For god’s sake, it wasn’t just trespassing, it wasn’t just bordering on property damage, it was decidedly dangerous too. Had he fallen off, or worse, through the roof, he’d have been pretty bady injured, and we’d have been there to pay the fucking compensation and repairs, I’m sure. This child is decidedly out of my favour.