7 Comments

My husband and I bought our first home 6 years ago in quite a rough area, we knew there was a lot of community housing around infact we bought our home from the council as part of their ‘clean up the neighbourhood’ program. The area is much nicer these days but early on we put up with a lot of parties and small children running around at odd hours of the day and night, nothing to dramatic though. However of particular concern was a woman in our close who to this day I day I still have no idea how many kids she actually had, all we really knew was that most were in nappies and they spent the majority of the day playing on the road, under our cars, in our boat and swinging off the work trailers.

So it was a heart stopping moment one day when as I backed slowly out of our drive that I saw her in the rear view mirror, arms waving frantically, my heart stopped and I tore out of the car expecting the worst only to be confronted by the wild eyed woman accusing me of speeding…I believe I laughed, this may have been the problem, we do get a lot of ‘hoons’ lost hoons speeding down our close which was why only the week before I had sent off a petition to the council to get some speed bumps put in, precisely because I feared for her children. I tried to explain this and therefore how absurd her accusation sounded, anyway I learnt my lesson; stay in the car and call 000 if a deranged woman tries to get your attention. She king hit me right between the eyes, but I didn’t go down despite needing 8 stitches, although she was quite apologetic, I guess she must have had problems with the law and DOCS in the past and was adamant that i shouldn’t call the police.

My only contact with this woman had been to ask her to keep her little ones in the yard, and to give her a ute load of second hand outdoor play equipment (in the hopes they would use it!) in the end they took her away that night and removed her children, it was a heart breaking end but all I could think of was what if the next person she hits doesn’t have such a lucky break (or hard head) as I, it wasn’t her first offence and sadly probably not her last. Within a week the house was up for sale, a lovely young couple have bought it and moved in…oh and the council agreed to speed bumps.

---

Posted by , 31st December 2013