{"id":2260,"date":"2010-09-08T12:35:13","date_gmt":"2010-09-08T16:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/?p=2260"},"modified":"2010-09-08T12:35:13","modified_gmt":"2010-09-08T16:35:13","slug":"how-to-alienate-your-neighbours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/08\/how-to-alienate-your-neighbours\/","title":{"rendered":"How to alienate your neighbours"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I need to cut the grass.\u00c2\u00a0 Pretty badly.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s been like a month since I last did it, and the grass has now decided it can just relax because it’s probably never going to happen again.\u00c2\u00a0 It has adopted a laid-back posture that only adds to the shaggy appearance of my lawn.\u00c2\u00a0 Any mowing effort at this point will require an enormous effort on my part, akin to blazing a trail through the virgin rainforest with a machete, with only my wits, pith helmet and my trusty sidekick Perkins to assist me in mapping the Amazon, only just barely escaping from a misguided but particularly amorous gorilla.<\/p>\n

But I digress.<\/p>\n

I was talking about the lawn.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is rather overgrown.\u00c2\u00a0 But as bad as it is, my yard is not quite as bad as this gentleman’s.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say that he doesn’t get along with his neighbours much.\u00c2\u00a0 These trees are called leyland cypress<\/a> trees and they are notoriously fast-growing (known to grow a meter per year), and they are the perfect tree to plant when you have decided that talking sociably to folks on your street is pretty much the last thing on your list of things to do.<\/p>\n

In fact, this particular gentleman<\/a> already lost a battle over a concrete wall he had put up for privacy in his backyard.\u00c2\u00a0 Wow.\u00c2\u00a0 This guy pretty much defines grumpy.\u00c2\u00a0 Or curmudgeon.\u00c2\u00a0 Or perhaps axe murderer, if Hollywood movies are right.<\/p>\n

Right.\u00c2\u00a0 Perkins, my helmet!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I need to cut the grass.\u00c2\u00a0 Pretty badly.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s been like a month since I last did it, and the grass has now decided it can just relax because it’s probably never going to happen again.\u00c2\u00a0 It has adopted a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[270],"class_list":["post-2260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-stupidity","tag-pithy-thoughts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piGNU-As","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2260"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2263,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2260\/revisions\/2263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}