don't come the cowboy with me, sonny jim

The front gardens of the houses down my street mainly have a low Edwardian wall with a wide concrete cap, and cemented-in holes where the iron railings used to be. Mine has an ugly 1980's-ish textured monstrosity which needs tying in before it drops onto and kills a passing daschund, another job which I'm currently steadfastly ignoring. About once every time I walk up the road or down to the Co-Op I wish that I had the nice low wall.

I just found two-and-a-half foot of the original cap at the bottom of my (empty, concrete, doomed) pond. Which I can't lift. Well, not without breaking myself, and I have done enough damage already today from shifting the soil that's in it. I strongly suspect that the cap-in-the-pond is about to become a feature of my garden. Luckily the ivy which grows through the cracks in the walls and floor will soon grow up and make it look (slightly?) more picturesque.

In other news, the top end of my pond seems to be mainly constructed from the tiles which once surrounded my front door (or a fire surround, as another bit appears to be a glomerate ex-hearthstone), and now exist only in about three of the houses up the street. They are mustard yellow, and victoria green, and heavily embossed. The cement they've been stuck together with has reacted with the original clay and they are also completely and utterly buggered.

Some days I'd like to get hold of the previous owner of this house and shake him firmly by the throat. I can live with his useless chipboard kitchen, and his bohemian bordello bathroom, have already obliterated his broomstick bannisters and his pub-lite living room and I have murderous schemes afoot for his fitted wardrobes; but he's still he's torturing me long distance. Laughing at me across the decades through the medium of rubble, fucked-up features, artex and suspended ceilings. Fuckwit.