Council turned up at my place to dig a dirt moat and chop down beloved trees. But I got my revenge

Detailed summary

The concreters from the council have been here for nearly two weeks, laying an unwanted, unneeded footpath outside our place. Every day about 11 cars noodle down our service road.…

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The concreters from the council have been here for nearly two weeks, laying an unwanted, unneeded footpath outside our place.

Every day about 11 cars noodle down our service road. Every six to 10 hours a neighbour drifts past with a dog on the wide, wide grassy nature strips that run to the kerb. New York it ain’t.

One reason we moved to the beach was to escape suburbia. Footpaths are suburban. And now we have one.

And the boys dug an extra metre of grass from the nature strip so reaching my car parked on the other side of the new footpath means leaping a dirt moat, like the Interflora man. It’s tricky to stick the landing, so dirt gets tracked everywhere.

Yesterday I nabbed a bloke who turned out to be from the council, not just a contractor. The motherlode of authority! He waved at the dirt moat: “We’ll put in grass seed.”

Righto. So I’ll long jump for months until it sprouts? “Put down a paver,” I said. He shrugged: “We don’t do pavers.”

It’s a long time since I’d fought so hard for composure: “In this instance, it really would be best if you did pavers.”

Worse, the council fella was supervising the removal of two mature ornamental plum trees from the nature strip. Think black-purple leaves, a riot of pink spring blossoms. In the way of progress, apparently.

Opening of the article, excerpted from The Sydney Morning Herald. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.