Look, I’m going to be straight with you. I really want to tell this story, but I’ve no clear idea of how to wrap it up so it’s at least VAGUELY about writing. It is, however, such a good story that I’m going to go with it. Call it a slice of life. Maybe you’ll see it in a future book.

So, I have a….difficult….neighbour. He lets his dogs run free and poop where the doggie whim takes them. He creates piles of junk on his front lawn and parks his car to block the road. He gets aggressive with anyone who complains, in your face yelling whilst holding tools aggressive.

There have been so many complaints to various local bodies made. It achieved nothing so we’ve all settled in to gentle resentment and muttering.

Then the new woman, let’s call her Mabel*, moved into the street. She seemed just like anyone else as she started to work on decorating her house and getting a deck put down in back. Then Difficult Neighbour’s dog took a poop on her lawn.

Sidebar to add, difficult neighbour has a ginormous dog that has no fear or respect of people. I get on with it ok, but it’s had run-ins with other people. So the poop is a considerable deposit.

Now, most people would have probably grit their teeth and let it pass so as not to stir anything up. Not Mabel! She marched down the road and hammered on Difficult Neighbours door.

“Your dog crapped on my lawn,” she told him. “Clear it up.”

“Ain’t my dog,” he lied to her face and closed the door.

For me this would be the cue to start a long year of silent, festering resentment that would taint every day henceforth and accomplish nothing. Not fricking Mabel! She has NO TRUCK with that sort of passive-aggressive shenanigans.

Nope, Mabel marched down to her house, snapped on a pair of rubber gloves, picked up the poop and carried it up the road.

What’s that you say? She’s going to leave it on the doorstep? No, no. That’s what you or I might do, probably neatly wrapped in a plastic bag. This, however, is Mabel, a woman whose dial starts at escalate. Where most people think they’ve gone ‘too far’, Mabel thinks ‘let’s go’.

What Mabel does is get to the door, wind up, and throw the packle of dog poop at his front door.

….

….

I have been quietly irritated with this guy for two years. The most I’ve done is give him a squinty look and occasionally pet his pooping dog. Look, I can’t help it. It might be a poopy dog whose coat feels like an old pub carpet, but it’s still a dog and I will love it if I get half a chance, ok? Y’all just need to accept that about it. One day I’ll die after my face gets eaten by a mastiff and my last words will be ‘he’s a good boy, really’**.

It’s odd. I don’t approve of throwing poop at anyone’s door. It’s uncivil. It’s not how people should resolve their differences. I would probably never do it, if only because it usually takes me half an hour and a good run up before I decide I’m actually angry about something.

However, you gotta admire someone that just…jumps straight to poop throwing, right? It’s just so bolshie.

Right, I’ve got to the end and I still can’t think of how to wrap this up to make it a writerly thing. Maybe…it’s surprising how far you can actually go with a character. People tend to balk at ‘nobody would ever do that!’ and argue that it’s unbelievable. Except it’s not!

People do jump straight to throwing poop. It’s just a bit extreme and makes everyone else stare. So if it is really important that your character throw some poop, you can have them do it. You just have to write your way up to that point so that it makes sense for the character to go on a poop spree.

Oh, that works! Right?

See you later on this month for the Stone the Crows blog tour!

*I don’t know why Mabel. I just went with it.

**To be fair I’ve only ever been bitten by one dog and that was my own. I’m still not sure if it was because he was evil (he was) or if he just hated me (he did). He was a good dog, though. The size of a tea pot and he’d have thrown down with the devil.