Shabby Treatment

The view from my window as I write

© Diana Morrison  20/01/16

After ten years of paying rent to the same landlord for the same property, you’d be forgiven for thinking that you might be treated with some consideration. Perhaps I am naive or idealistic but it is what I believed.

As I pen this post, I am trying not to hear the droning engine and rattling bucket of a digger tearing through the piece of land I believed to be part of my garden, in order to accommodate the new septic tank for my landlord’s recently acquired property next door. There was no consultation about this, not with me anyhow – patriarchy is alive and well in rural Ireland.

The initial threat was to my polytunnel – there was talk that they might have to dismantle it to lay drainage pipes. Whilst there was an assurance that it would be re-erected, I know that the plastic is reaching the end of its life and would not survive this proposal – I had hoped for at least one more season before I had to replace it.

Time passed and nothing further was mentioned until yesterday. It transpired that the new septic tank, (which will not benefit my property) needed to be placed further up the garden. The good news was that they were hoping to avoid the tunnel, but in the event of it having to come down, the plastic would be replaced at no expense to me; the proposed route would go alongside it.

Work started this morning, and to my distress the digger is churning up the ground right where I had chosen to bury my beloved cat; companion for twenty years, Tiptoes (Tippy) who passed away in 2009 and the skitty kitty, LooLou, sister to Mr Mews, who died on the road in 2012. From where I'm sitting, I can’t quite see whether the grave has been violated or not, but I've just watched them lower the tank into the ground in a position that would certainly wreck a tranquil resting place if it over flowed.

To add insult to injury, I have been told that the new tenant wants the bit of garden that presently accommodates the polytunnel and my vegetable garden – so I am twice the loser – the loss of garden and tunnel and the desecration of my fur babies’ grave.

Maybe I'm too sentimental and making too much of it. Perhaps, because I am a decent, sympathetic, and empathetic person, I expect everyone else to be the same. I just feel very shabbily treated after being a good tenant for all this time.

Some things never change. Beware the landlord; even the good ones can turn when the opportunity to make more money comes along.

I am not an avid reader of the Daily Mirror, I have to admit but I discovered this on Facebook earlier on and thought that it tied in well with the theme of this post.

Great Tory Housing Shame: Third of Ex Council Houses Now Owned By Rich Landlords