gossip

My neighbour across the road tells me that 'they' have been robbing his flowerbeds. They? I ask stupidly, you mean it's more than one person? No, no, them, he replies. 

Them are the riff-raff, lay-abouts, foreigners, kids with no manners, maybe even foreign kids with no manners, or possibly eco-communists like us with the no nuke stickers. So now he has erected a sign warning all and sundry that he is counting the cosmea flowers and should he catch the culprits (incl. children) he will prosecute.

So there.

He is out there now with his fan club of blue rinse ladies all tut-tutting about the dramatic demise of the neighbourhood. Godlovehim, I'll sneak out through my back door, he gives me the creeps.