LA COMMUNIDAD PART DOS

Then there was the time he decided he would ring me every day just for a chat. I say a chat but it was more of the heavy breathing type of natter only he kept asking for English classes or there was a dull silence on the other end, so dull that I knew it had to be him. I did wonder if he was thinking on the lines of the dreaded 'disciplina ingles' that the Spanish like to joke about. Little does he know how restrained I have to be as there is nothing I would like more than to give him a good kicking. His only knowlege of the lingo is 'speek eeenglis?' anytime anyone remotely foreign passes by, that's when he isn't throwing stuff at them, anything he can lay his hands on, cigarette butts, yoghurt pots, the entire content of his ashtray slammed against the railings of his balcony for added effect. He likes gardening too, which involves him 'trimming' his ivy that has grown around the balcony and then dumping it in a great pile on the street below. The men who work in the office below his balcony are often greeted by him gobbing on their heads or if they are lucky a shower of confetti, his bills and ours probably, being torn up and launched into the air. There is an almost poetic feel to his actions as he goes about his daily business and perhaps he should be accompanied by music wherever he goes, maybe the theme tune from the Omen. He is outstanding at being the most odious git anyone could aspire to and deserves a medal. Sometimes he tells me to 'go back to Germany' in Spanish, or 'importada', an import or something like that. I saw him the other day chasing his cleaner up the road, the poor woman turning around every few seconds to tell him to leave her alone and that she didn't know him so God knows what he has done to her. Mercedes, who is la presidenta this year, had a little 'chat' with his 'wife' the other day to complain once more about his unreasonable activities nocturnal and otherwise, and seconds later all I could hear was a wailing banshee, her screaming, the 'wife' that is not Mercedes. 'How could you?' she cried, and 'cerdo!', 'pig!' etc. She has one of those annoying voices at the best of times, the 'wife' again not old Merche. A sound that resembled toothache while waiting to have your head cut off by terrorists would be more soothing on the ear. I was seriously worried by this sound she was making but the other neighbours just told me to leave her to it and hope they, the 'wife' and Mr C, kill one another and do us all a favour. The Spanish have an expression for when you die or pass on that goes along the lines of he has gone to 'el otro barrio', to the other neighbourhood which isn't reassuring as I always thought it might be run on the lines of Canada or New Zealand and not a place where you find yourself in a queue with Mr C and Piti the Priapic Poodle and looking at your maker and telling him/her, 'these two have got a lot of explaining to do'.