This was the NAUGHTY CORNER

GTRRRRRRRRRNnnnnggggggg.

I'm on a crash trajectory with a bloke that has been winding me up for ages now. I've just really blown my top at him and had to fight the impulse to give him a smack.

I'm going to let off steam by writing about it here. Nobody need read this it's going to be boring, I just need to write it to get it out.

There is literally nowhere to park round here, at all. It's hell. Opposite my house are four privately rented garages. Only one of them is used for a car, the others are just used for storage by local families.

They are in a line, with a dipped kerb, a white line, and a "DO NOT PARK HERE" sign. Despite this the same people always park there in front of the garages. They really shouldn't, but they do. We would never park a car in front of those garages. I sometimes have to park a mile away. But we, and many others, will use that as the best and only space to pull up and unload children/shopping, or load children/shopping, so we might pull up with the engine running for two or three minutes, that's all. If somebody comes round to help me with my car I always say to pull up there, because we're out there and can move swiftly if access is needed, and only one garage is used at 9:30am and 4pm. If we're not going to be out there though I tell friends not to park there.

The bloke who uses his garage for his car doesn't live around here, he works around here. So he arrives at 9:30, puts his beloved Ford Fiesta in his garage, goes off to work and then gets it out again at about 4pm to go home. He is a weird bloke. You can just tell. He's that sort who has had an entire lifetime of not knowing any communication rules at all, and who has probably wound up so many people with his weird slightly creepy attitude over his life that by now he just assumes everyone else is always very angry. I can't really explain it. He's not overtly weird, but he kind of creeps, and mooches, and he's just odd. He's like the nerdy kid in the playground who was possibly maybe a little bit 'socially autistic' and just said all the wrong things from day one.

About 12 months ago, the no parking was further endorsed by a line of traffic cones that had appeared to stop people parking there. I'd rather they weren't there but I thought "Fair enough... people keep parking there, and it must be annoying not to be able to get in or out, and it also means the rest of us can't cruise in to pick up or drop off".

But it didn't stop the usual suspects from parking there. At that point, my sympathy lay with the garage renters and I had nothing but contempt for the people who were just too lazy to park further away. It's the same old people. I know who they are.

Then trouble started in Spring. A local chap with a Scimitar came over to see how I was getting on with changing my timing gear. I told him to pull up in the bay as we were right across the road and would be with my car the whole time. I advised him he might need to move it if anyone came.

So we're chatting about my car and over my friend's shoulder I see this lurch bloke turn up on foot to get his car out to go home. As he approaches my friend's Scimitar (and his garage) he's huffing and shaking his head, and I call over and say "it's okay that's ours we'll move it" but he completely ignores me and walks to the unseen side of my friends car, leans his hand on the soft top hood and stoops down behind the car. I had no idea what he was doing but he had already made it clear he was going to be awkward about it by ignoring me and huffing. So I go over shouting EXCUSE ME and he's down behind the car, and as I get right up to him he gets back up with his back to me, completely ignores me still even though I'm right on him saying EXCUSE ME WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MY FRIEND'S CAR?, and he starts to walk back to his car. So I call loudly and say we are going to move the car, and he completely ignores me. Wont make eye contact, wont acknowledge my presence, wont acknowledge receipt of the message.

So that's quite odd, but my friend moves his car and that's that.

Then a few weeks later I start seeing cars parked - not blocking his garage at all, but parked outside the three storage garages - and they have the traffic cones on their roofs and bonnets. I see about 5 cars over a couple of weeks with cones on them. I begin to suspect that what this Lurch was doing that day was leaning down to pick up a traffic cone to put it on my friend's car but when he realised it was our car he bottled it and walked off.

So I don't like that at all.

But I have no proof.

Cut to about a month ago and I'm working in my back room and a car horn starts going loudly outside, and it doesn't stop. For about 5 minutes it doesn't stop so I eventually go out to see what's going on.

Lurch is sat in his car, which he's pulled out of his garage, and he's just sat in it, pressing the horn.

Red mist for me. he's been on the horn for well over five minutes by now.

There was a white car parked across the three garages. Not his though. He could (and did later on, when I made him) reverse out and around it quite easily.

So I get the proper red mist on, because he's now disturbing the whole neighbourhood just because he doesn't like this white Corsa being parked outside the garages. I lean in through his window and shout at him to let go of the horn, which he does, and I have a right old go at him about disturbing the peace. He says something very unwise like "Oh I'm sorry if I woke you up from your unemployment slumber" or something that really wasn't wise at all, so I lay in to him verbally about him not having any entitlement at all to behave like a petulant child blaring his horn. There are words from him trying to justify it but mostly it's me raging at him and him making these snide comments and just being very odd.

Then I ask him if he put the cone on the Corsa and he started to say something that justified it on the basis that people shouldn't park there. So I went nuts at him about that and said he had absolutely no right at all to damage other people's cars, and that we all use it as a loading bay and we live here and there's nowhere for residents to park because our streets are filled with people coming into the area (which is true).

Anyway, I tell him if there's any damage to the car he'll be paying for it. He keeps muttering that it must be my car or I wouldn't be so angry, and I keep telling him I'm angry because he doesn't have the right to cause damage to other people's cars even if they are parked there.

Anyway, I film him removing the cone and tell him I'll be letting the owner know, and he drives off.

So that was that and the cones stopped appearing on cars.

Until today. I get home at about 4pm and there's the usual blue Merc parked across the three garages, and a cone on the bonnet. It immediately winds me up but I assume I've already missed him. Then, he comes lurching down the road towards his garage. I watch, and the first thing he does is he goes up to the Merc and removes the cone from the hood. He must have put it there when he arrived this morning.

So I'm outside straight away... "Excuse me.... EXCUSE ME" Completely ignores me again.

"OI. LURCH" and by now I'm already up close.

I ask him if he put the cone on the car... no.

Why did you remove it then... I don't know.

You put it on there. I've got film of you putting cones on cars, don't be a coward, admit it was you.

Wasn't me.

Who was it then?

he points to the next garage and says "It was the builder"

So, you're accusing the builder are you?

No No I didn't say that- panicked voice

I'll go and get the bloke who owns this Merc shall I? You'll like him. (< he's a really big mean curse word) and I go off to ring the Merc owner's bell

Lurch mutters in a blind panic "Don't be such a stupid curse word" as I walk towards the Merc owner's door.

So that was that.

I lost my composure. Straight back up to him. Chest shove. Asked him if he's trying to start a fight. He's mumbling and sputtering but oddly he's being very antagonistic and in his own weird moochy way aggressive and offensive.

I start shouting at him that whilst I have a degree of sympathy for the fact the garages get blocked, he has no right to unlawful behaviour such as damaging cars or disturbing the peace. I go back and ring Merc Owner's bell, but he's now trying to get into his car in the garage, so I run back and getin his way tellinghim not to be a coward and to stand by what he did if it's justified. But he's being weird and moochy and trying to leave, so I grab his bag strap and try to pull him round to the Merc owner's house and he's struggling and resisting. At that point I think it must look quite comical so I decide not to try and drag him down the road and I start shouting at him about damaging cars again.

he says in his sneering sarcastic tone "Oh come on it doesn't damage the cars at all you're being dramatic"

So I say "oh really? Lets put one on your car then" and I pick up a cone and try to get past him into his garage to put it on his car roof.

He goes all manic goalkeeper and is in a blind panic about the possibility that I might get a cone on his car. I can tell he loves that car and keeps it immaculate, and frankly I have no intention of actually putting the cone on his car I just wanted to undermine his assertion that I'm merely being dramatic and there's no harm done by a gritty street cone being placed on a car's paintwork.

So he's in a blind panic by now and I start to enjoy myself throwing him blindsides and then dodging the other way to reach his car like a basketball player. he's leaping about all over the place panicking like crazy and shouting at me to stop. Eyes wild.

Then I put the cone down and get right up close and give him another mouthful, tell him how it is, and in the middle of it he cuts in and says "You lied to me the other day didn't you".

He's that sort. Just odd and slimey. In the middle of me giving him verbal hell, he thinks of that. So I ask him to explain and he says "the other day when you came out you told me you didn't know who's car it was but you did didn't you". So I told him the (true) story of how after he'd blared his horn and I went out and gave him a bollocking and made him reverse around the car, the person who owned that car... a female neighbour I hardly know... came out and thanked me because she had only pulled up to drop her shopping off and was too terrified to come back because he was behaving so erratically and she was afraid to approach him.

So I told him that and told him if he ever called me anything else again I would properly lose my temper.

And then I gave him another vomitload of verbal anger and said "I'M DONE NOW" and walked off back to my front door.

And he does this really odd thing, which he did last time. As I walk away, he starts talking in this slurry mock laidback voice about his point of view on it,and he keeps going, at the same low conversational volume, as I walk away and get back to my front door, and I haven't a clue what he's saying even though I can hear him droning on in the background behind me... he's just droning, on his own, at a conversational level, and I'm getting further away by the second.

So that was that.

I feel better now. He's such a freakball.

The problem is... next time he does it... it's going to be difficult to restrain myself.

And I did once have sympathy. I have said to my wife countless times that the people who park there are selfish and lazy. But I just don't think that gives him the right to potentially vandalise cars and to sit there blaring his horn.

Nothing good will come of this.