Comment: he has to be brought into line

I have a new neighbour. And soon, I will climb over the old wooden fence separating our properties and kill him. Possibly with a length of steel pipe. Or maybe even with bits of his late-model Sportser that will fall off after I beat it to pieces with the steel pipe. And then he will be my former neighbour.

It will be the right thing to do and not a court in the land will convict me. I shall plead Diminished Responsibility and will be sent for treatment to a nice facility somewhere with ocean views and powerful sedatives to keep me smiling.

He moved in about three months ago. And that same evening I heard the unmistakeable sound of a shot-gun-piped Sporty fire up. “Cool,” I said to myself. “A human being has moved in next door.”

The bike was warmed up for what I thought was an inordinate length of time, but figured, “Hey, maybe it’s been sitting for a while and old mate is just checking it out.”

So he revved it, let it idle, then revved it, let it idle, and revved it and let it idle (and so on) for about 10 minutes – and yes, I did look at my watch – and then he turned it off.

After about half-an-hour, he came back out to his garage and started it again. And again, I sat enthralled as he did the whole rev-idle-rev-idle crap for a long time, before finally clunking it into first and riding off. I saw him ride past my house in a t-shirt, shorts and thongs, and felt the vibrations of the Sportster shaking my windows as he revved it between gear changes. No, I don’t know why he was doing that. But that was how he rolled and more power to him.

Which is how I felt at the time. I like loud bikes. I always have. Nothing in my garage has ever been fitted with a stock exhaust, and I have owned stroked Harleys that were criminally loud and offensive. So it’s not the noise that bothers me. And I am not at all fussed by what old mate is wearing. I have been known to cruise down to the local shops in shorts and thongs myself.

It’s not any of that. It’s the start-up and shut-down procedure. It’s the inanely long same-same routine of unnecessary and ignorant shitwaddery that will see me end him in the not-too-distant future. Because the shut-down procedure is exactly the same as the start-up procedure – except in reverse.

And it happens maybe twice a week and most times the bike is just put away afterwards. Perhaps once a month it is taken for a half-hour ride – mainly around my suburb because I can hear him roaring around the back streets.

It’s made me crazy. I have been driven insane by this bog-brained yutz and his OCD-Sporstering beside my fence.

I was initially going to speak to him about it. This was after my wife asked me what was wrong with him and his bike.

“Why does he do that?” she asked, maybe after this had been going on for a month.

“I don’t know,” I shrugged.

“Is there something wrong with his bike?”

“No,” I said. “It sounds fine.”

“So why does he keep revving it and letting it idle and then revving and…”

“IHAVENOBLOODYIDEA!” I shrieked.

“Don’t yell,” she said quietly. “Maybe you should have a word.”

“Do you think that’s wise?”

“Probably not,” she answered, doubtlessly remembering all those other times I’d had words with various neighbours about various things.

So I did nothing and have done nothing and each time he starts up his Sportster, I go just that little bit more feral. And one day, when he least expects it, I shall clamber over our shared fence like the wrath of God, carrying a steel pipe in my teeth because I need both hands to get over the fence, and it will end.

Initially, there will probably be a bit more noise, yelling (his), grunting (mine), and the crash and smash of a steel pipe hitting other metallic objects. The Sporty will likely even continue to idle for a while before I can beat it into silence by smashing its engine block into shards of alloy.

And then there will be peace and sanity will return to my world.