Actions Speak Louder than Words
These two cases that I tell you of happened a few years apart, and I am not one to cause trouble, it takes a lot to wind me up into taking action like I describe hear.
It was ten years ago late June time and mowing grass for hay a couple of fields back from the farm and village, this field gradually sloped up giving a panoramic view of the back of all the houses and the pub. Next to the pub a new house had just been completed, in fact a piece of the pub car park had been sold for its development, and the builder man was working on his own transforming the garden from a building site into a garden.
He had been working at it all week having finished the front garden complete with security iron railings and gates and new black tarmac, he was now concentrating his efforts on the back garden. This was more difficult as the turf and other materials had to be wheeled round on a wheel barrow, and presumably the rubbish he was tidying up wheeled round to the front where his builder's truck was parked, a lot of hard work on a hot day.
It was early afternoon and the mowing progressing well, when I noticed, (from a quarter mile back) that one of the new panels, of the new panel fence at the back of this house had been lifted out of its slot in the new concrete posts. For the next hour and half I kept a close watch on the man working at the turf laying, he was raking up stones and surplus soil filling his barrow, the wheeling it to the gap in the panels and tipping it into my field. You don't mind the odd barrow full, annoying though it is, but this was repeated so many times that in a couple of hours you could see the pile above the wheat that was growing in that field.
Having finished mowing the field I thought I better investigate what was going on, so I put the front scoop bucket on the front of the loader tractor and made my way through the wheat round the tram lines at the back of the pub, then turned through the wheat with the bucket at the bottom of this new pile of trash stones soil and off cuts of turf.
As the field is slightly lower than the gardens a certain amount could be scooped up by the tractor, the rest I loaded by hand to fill the bucket as much as it would hold. Well over a ton in all. All the while this was going on the builder/ landscaper man kept his head down laying the new turf and as it was near his knocking off time wanted to get the job finished.
Once loaded I backed out the way I had come into the field, and back into the farmyard, The man must have breathed a sigh of relief as not a word was spoken in the half hour it had took me to tidy up his mess. I drove on out of the yard and along the road to the front of this new house where his truck was parked and could have tipped it directly in his truck. But that was too easy, I tipped it at the back of his truck onto the new black tarmac and just inside of the new gates which now could not be closed. On top of that he could not move his truck to go home as he was blocked in and it was now his knocking off time. I just drove quietly back to the farm and kept out of site, no doubt the new owner would be arriving home at any minuet and would want an explanation as to why all that soil stones turf and rubbish had been dumped in his gateway and on his new tarmac.
It was just a case of actions speak louder than words.
We have a field where the cows graze that back up to half a dozen expensive house, they like to think they are the best in the village, on walking into the field one afternoon to look the cattle, one family were having a barbeque in their back garden, during the day they had had a tidy up in the garden. They had chucked cabbage and brussel sprout stalks, lawn mowing's, turf off cuts, spent bedding plants and the like over the fence into the field. I went over and asked him politely to clean it up and put it into his brown bin for recycling. He just said Oh yer yer and made me out to be a fool.
Two days on and he had not cleaned it up so I went with the front bucket on the tractor into the field and loaded it up, about two good barrow loads. Drove back out of the gate and up the cul-de-sac in front of his house, reached the front end loader as far as I could over his front immaculate lawn and flipped the bucket a few time as it slipped out and returned his garden waste. All who lived up there saw what was going on, as it was unusual for a tractor to be up there.
It was just another case of actions speak louder than words.
Actions speak louder than words,
Remind them on what they have done,
Being polite to a neighbour,
Then treat you like you're a simple moron,
Get on with most over the years,
A bit of respect to be earned,
That goes for both sides every time,
But some they will never be learned.
Quote; "Saying is one thing and doing is another."
16th-century French writer Michel de Montaigne