Summer hazards.

I’m having a break from keeping watch...I’m trying not to see what the children next door are doing.
It’s not working.
The houses here have a shared court yard. It’s fine for playing in.
There are four houses , mine, the original farmhouse and the barn which is also mine.
The children next door have bikes. They enjoy whizzing around the courtyard at top speed and I sometime enjoy watching them as I wash up.
Last night I found the reason why the slope at the back of the barn had started to collapse. They bring up their bikes to free wheel down it. It gives then a sense of speed, a very fleeting one.
So the edge of the slope is now crumbling. A large piece of stone has broken off and my gardener has tried to fix it with no success.
I asked the children not to use the tiny slope.
Obviously they don’t see why not. So there they were again...and again.
I had a word with their mother this morning. At the present rate of crumble it would be rubble by the end of the school holidays.
I now feel very mean.
The real problem is that the parents next door see the entire area as a safe place.
And it is, providing the various vehicles slow down a bit.
My visitors have twice narrowly avoided a small child on a bike.
I once brought the youngest one in from the main road outside as she sat on her tiny trike, wondering which way to go!
This area is safe. Plus we all have huge gardens. The trouble is that two of the houses are not lived in permanently. So the children get used to playing in their gardens and drives.
I now feel mean for telling them off.....but I’d feel worse if they damaged either themselves or their bikes...or my crumbly bit of wall.
And we are only half way through the long holiday!



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