"Well, it's what we all do, isn't it? I mean, you don't like to kill them. Makes such a mess when you do, the little sods. You just chuck 'em over the hedge. Everyone does it. It's what you do. That's all I did. Honest. Had to stop 'em eating the wife's flowers.

"So the next day, him, next door, well, he was hedge trimming wasn't he? Tipped his privet bits all over me decking. And it rained, didn't it? Have you tried sweeping up privet leaves on decking? The wife was right angry, waved her broom at me. ‘You're going to have to do something about it!’ she said, like it was my fault. I told her I'd sort it out. But that didn’t shut her up. Give her her due, she does like a neat garden. ‘Just do something,’ she repeated. ‘It's the last straw. Yesterday it was the smoke from their barbecue and I had me clothes on the line. They all smell of hickory wood and sausages now. That woman, I admit, she’d told me as how they were having a few friends round to try out their new Bondi 500, but she knows I always do me washing on a Sunday. Inconsiderate.’ 

“So that’s when I knew I had to … be more assertive like. Yes, I admit it. I put the cat's poo through their letter box. Now don’t screw your face up like that. I had to do something, didn’t I? 

“But it was the next day, just when I got home from work, that was when it really kicked off. The glue in the key hole. Couldn’t get into me own house. Now, this was different. This was going too far. This cost me. Had to have the whole bleeding lock replaced, didn’t I?

“If they’d only said something then. Apologised. And, of course, paid for the lock. It could have turned out different. Could have stopped there. But I had to do something. I mean, what sort of man am I?

“And I admit, I did enjoy the sound of the air coming out of the tyres as I stuck the knife in. How was I to know he needed the car for an important meeting the next morning? He just shouldn’t have said what he said. The missus was right upset. ‘Language like that in this neighbourhood! It’s made me go all funny,’ she told me. And give her her due. She'd never swear like that … well, not in public. 

“It was the paint stripper all over my car the following day that really got to me. I mean I couldn’t think straight. I know. I know. You don’t have to tell me. It wasn’t proportionate. But a man can only be pushed so far. Anyway, they should have had fire alarms fitted. There’s no excuse, what with the adverts and that. And how was I to know that their upstairs double-glazed windows were locked with the keys downstairs so they couldn’t get out? Mind you, that double glazing was good - you could hardly hear the screams from outside. 

“And you’ve got to admit, I was a bit unlucky to be run over by the fire engine what that interfering neighbour on the other side called as I was trying to run away from the scene. You might call it dead unlucky, eh?  Get it?

“So, what do you think? You going to let me in or what?”



St Peter looked at the man waiting impatiently in front of the huge gates - their golden filigree frames radiating, throbbing warm, glowing ineffable light across the infinite blue, whilst the sheen of their myriad millions of opalescent pearls glistened celestially. 

“Sorry, mate,” Peter said.

He watched as the man tumbled away, open mouthed, down, down, towards the interminable horror of that dark netherworld far, far below.

“Stupid bugger,” Peter muttered as he picked up his copy of that evening’s Elysian Echo. Turning from the sports pages to the front page he saw the headline ‘More Fighting and Deaths in Gaza’. “Oh God! More of the same on the way. Neighbours. Blooming neighbours. Who'd 'ave 'em?” he sighed.