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Just when you thought it was all good...

Sometimes life throws you a curve ball....whatever one of those is. You’ve spent some time dealing with rubbish, waiting, biding your time, having been told that all things come to those who wait. You wait and wait, and maybe there is even a glimmer of hope; your energy and spirit is sapped, and you start feeling like nothing will change. At this point you start thinking that you must have been really naughty or evil at some point previously - that can be the only possible reason for things not getting better - you start believing it is karma come back to bite you on the bottom.

Suddenly - things change for the better! That thing that you had hoped for has suddenly come about. You hardly dare to believe it, and you don’t start celebrating, in case it doesn’t last, isn’t true, in case it all goes tits up once again. Time moves on a little - there is a blip, looks like your joy was only temporary. But wait, you wait a little while longer, and it looks like the joy is back to stay!! Hooray - you can start finding a better way to live, a way where you can get on and do some of those jobs and projects that you have been meaning to do and that you’ve been saying you would do for some time!

But wait...nature abhors a vacuum don’t you know? Something else comes along to disturb your peace, to upset your equilibrium, and you find that your time is taken up with worry, upset, and you find it very difficult to enjoy any of things that you usually do to take your mind off things.

And then you pick yourself up, you get on with fighting the next fight. You are prepared to cooperate, negotiate, and you believe that what you are saying and suggesting is reasonable. But you are not dealing with reasonable people - you are dealing with people who have looked at the words of a document for a particular phrase, but not looked further than that.

You find that you are blocked into your back garden. A wall has been erected over your back gate. You struggle, but manage, to get the green garden waste bin over the wall, and then back again. A few days later a gate is erected, and is padlocked - from the other side.

You start looking further at documents, and you realise you may have been misled about some vital information, or you made a false assumption...you do some research as far as you are able, and you can easily justify to yourself where the law is on your side. There is so much evidence to prove that you are right in your belief. You even have a reason for the wording in later documents (42 feet - or thereabouts) - you can explain the ‘thereabouts’. You look for evidence all around you, and all this evidence seems to support your case / belief...

But wait, there is this niggling little doubt in your mind...you are an intelligent person, and you realise that you could just be making the information fit your version of events. You try, because you are an intelligent person, to look at it from another point of view, to find some other explanation, but you can’t find any other way to interpret it. You doubt yourself, and although you believe yourself to be right, you are still anxious.

You worry about every knock at the door, every sound outside, every conversation snippet you hear, you think you can hear it about the situation - you are permanently on edge. You start to fear a knock at the door when you are not expecting anyone to come round. Any unknown numbers on the phone, you fear the call. You are in a permanently heightened state, so much so that the situation keeps you awake at night, and disturbs your sleep.

You are desperate to have the situation sorted out, and you know you have to write letters, and that you need to be in a strengthened state to do this - but your energy and spirit is sapped once again.

The reason for all this angst? Previous bad experience that has been carried on to us, without getting to know us at all.

I am an over-thinker - I can easily imagine the worst situation, and I can easily play out conversations and situations in my head. I fear recriminations, and I have always hated conflict.

What is the conclusion from all of this? Well, we do what we have to do to try and resolve it all, and hope that the outcome is the one we desire.

Many of us are looking for a simpler way of life, a way thar people lived 50-100 years ago, where there was community spirit and give and take. Where you do things for other people without expecting anything in return, where you do things must to get along with other people. Such a way of life is still possible, and is available in North Devon - and that’s when good neighbours become good friends ...as the theme tune goes!

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