![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
We pay very high council tax here. Like most people in a 2-tier council, we pay tax to the police, the county and the borough, but we also pay a high tax to the village. So high, that they are legally obliged to tell us what they are spending their money on. Which is a cemetery and street lighting. And some other stuff, but mostly, it pays for a cemetery and street lighting.
Now, I don't mind that I don't use the cemetery. Actually, I do use it a wee bit, as from time to time I've enjoyed (if that is not too positive a word) visiting and looking at the spectacular floral tributes with which our local Ethnic Minority decorate the graves of both the recently dead and those in the vicinity (and are quite splendid even without the tributes).
And I only mind a little bit paying twice for the street lighting. Everyone in the borough pays for street lighting in the borough town, and we in the village pay again for lighting in the village. I have sometimes used the lights in the town.
No, what makes me mad is paying twice for something which we Have Not Got.
Outside our house, there is no lighting.
Which (coupled with my lasar-damaged eyes) is why I failed to get out of my gate this morning, but instead walked straight over the wall dividing our house from our neighbors (mistaking, in the gloom, their gateway for our gateway).
Actually 'straight over' isn't quite true: I walked into, and then over the wall.
So now I can add 'hurt leg' to the current list of woes.
Plus, guilt over the crack in the wall. Perhaps the neighbors won't notice. Perhaps they won't associate me with the crack, despite the half-eaten slice of cheese on toast on their drive, which I dropped as I fell (and couldn't find in the dark).
And then, of course, leg hurts too much to walk the mile and a half to the doctors, to check what landing on my hands has done.
They don't seem to hurt any more than they did before I let go of the toast and landed on them.
I think I'm going to be a Bad Diabetic, and make myself a bacon butty with Waitrose's peccorino and pine nut dip for dinner.
Now, I don't mind that I don't use the cemetery. Actually, I do use it a wee bit, as from time to time I've enjoyed (if that is not too positive a word) visiting and looking at the spectacular floral tributes with which our local Ethnic Minority decorate the graves of both the recently dead and those in the vicinity (and are quite splendid even without the tributes).
And I only mind a little bit paying twice for the street lighting. Everyone in the borough pays for street lighting in the borough town, and we in the village pay again for lighting in the village. I have sometimes used the lights in the town.
No, what makes me mad is paying twice for something which we Have Not Got.
Outside our house, there is no lighting.
Which (coupled with my lasar-damaged eyes) is why I failed to get out of my gate this morning, but instead walked straight over the wall dividing our house from our neighbors (mistaking, in the gloom, their gateway for our gateway).
Actually 'straight over' isn't quite true: I walked into, and then over the wall.
So now I can add 'hurt leg' to the current list of woes.
Plus, guilt over the crack in the wall. Perhaps the neighbors won't notice. Perhaps they won't associate me with the crack, despite the half-eaten slice of cheese on toast on their drive, which I dropped as I fell (and couldn't find in the dark).
And then, of course, leg hurts too much to walk the mile and a half to the doctors, to check what landing on my hands has done.
They don't seem to hurt any more than they did before I let go of the toast and landed on them.
I think I'm going to be a Bad Diabetic, and make myself a bacon butty with Waitrose's peccorino and pine nut dip for dinner.
