Benny and the Pyromaniac

The graffiti on the sushi shop has a "Scream" motif, well in advance of Halloween. I guess whoever wrote it is trying to get us in the mood.

Remember how I filed a maintenance request for the trimming of our front garden? Well, I also wrote to the landlords, just to give them a heads-up about that request and a few others for minor repairs. The landlord wrote back thanking me for the update but questioning whether the garden fell under our responsibility, as the lease dictates that the tenants do garden maintenance.

Now, ever since we moved in I've been under the impression that our landlord maintains the front garden while we do the back (which is most of the work, obviously). I don't know where I got this idea -- I think it was from the previous tenant, a woman who also taught at our school. The landlord has trimmed it without question a couple of times in the past, when we've asked.

But when I paged through our lease I couldn't find any clause pertaining to the front garden -- so maybe he's right. Maybe it IS our job. There's a clause that says the landlord must maintain the "exterior" of the house, and it could be that the front garden is considered part of the exterior, but anyway it's up in the air and I think we're waiting to see what the management company says. I would have trimmed it long ago if I'd thought we were supposed to.

I found this poster on my walk to work yesterday. Poor Benny! I looked him up online and it turns out he was swiped from his owner's car in a Tesco parking lot in Tring, a town in suburban Hertfordshire, FOUR YEARS AGO! Why the poster has just gone up now, in West Hampstead of all places, I'm not sure. Maybe Benny's owners figured a stolen Pomeranian was likely to surface in a place where well-off people have posh little dogs, as is true for some of our neighbors. (We, on the other hand, have Olga, the bulldozer.)

I also found this intriguing construction set out on the sidewalk. I assume it's a homemade dollhouse, but it amused me because it made me think of my childhood. My dad used to burn his own household trash -- he didn't like putting it out at the street. Several times when he had an empty box, we begged him to give it to us and we turned it into a house -- we cut windows in it and made furniture and hung paper towels at the windows for curtains, that kind of thing. And then we burned it down.

(I say "we" did this, but I honestly can't remember how involved my younger siblings were. I think it was mainly me and my stepbrother, who was my exact age -- probably 10 or 11.)

My father was disturbed enough by our enthusiasm that he pulled me aside and talked to me about it. I assured him we were just playing and we'd never set anything important on fire, which was completely true.

Later, as a newspaper reporter, I did a story about the fact that many pre-teen boys go through a period of fascination with fire. Apparently this has something to do with testosterone and psycho-sexual development blah blah blah, and this is why boys often manage to set dangerous fires. Fortunately, in our case, our blazes were confined to single boxes on our basketball court.