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House Crimes

You are the envy of everyone in rented accommodation. You have purchased your very own house. This is the place you can call home, the place that is your refuge after a long day in the big world. You no longer have to put up with builder-inspired brown carpets or cheap paint. Basically, you can live how you want in the kind of surroundings you have always dreamed of.

And there, my friends, is where the problems start. One of my hobbies is standing in front of people's houses and muttering jealously to myself about the unfairness of it all. Originally, this unfairness extended only to the fact that this person owned a house and I didn't. Which was fine, they probably deserved to own their house. They had probably worked very hard to own it and were very happy.

But owning a house is not enough for some people. No, they have to then make their mark on it, introduce their own individual style. Which is all very well for the interior, but when innocent passers by are affected, this gets serious.

I have decided that new laws should be drawn up. They would come under the general heading of the House Crimes Act 2002, but would have subsections describing the specific offences and varying degrees of punishment available. There should also be large fines for non-compliance as most of the perpetrators have more money than taste. You know the kind of thing I am talking about; you have seen it on every street in every town and village.

Where I come from, down the country, there is a new fashion emerging which I feel is one that should carry a weighty sentence - like being slapped around the head with a dead trout and made to sign your house over to me. Basically, they build really big houses, with 4/5/6 bedrooms and lots of potential. They then go out of their way to find the tiniest windows known to man and buy loads of them. These mini-me windows give the impression of living in the Gingerbread house from Hansel & Gretel.

Actually, the poor defenceless window suffers quite a bit at the hands of these criminals. One of the most common crimes here is "leading". For those of you who don't know this refers to the old practise of window making before they were able to find a way of making big sheets of glass. They would get small panes and attach them together with strips of lead. There is no excuse for this anymore - they can make big panes now. This glorious news does not seem to have reached our criminal friends. It seems to me that you lose the point of a window if it is divided into sections. I'm told you don't notice when you are looking out of them but I don't believe that. I believe they just say that to justify their crimes and to quell the longing for a normal window. It also begs the question, if it makes no difference, why have it?

Another window crime is fake bay windows. I love bay windows, I would love to own a house with bay windows but not so much as to stoop to "creating" my own ones. You know the ones- they are normal windows curved at the side to look as if they are bay windows. They fail miserably in this endeavour because a bay window needs a bay room, the wall has to be curved too. They look to me as if the window melted in the heat. They are also regularly accompanied by the aforementioned leading and grotesque stained glass flowers.

I cannot leave this subject without mentioning porthole windows. These are small, round windows that are usually on the sides or the front of houses. This could be forgiven if you live facing the sea, it could be considered to fit in with the surroundings. It should not be condoned if you live in the suburbs. What is the point of them? Does the house magically change into a boat, James Bond style, and sail off once a year? Are they doing an experiment on the effects of cabin fever? Whatever the reasoning, there is no getting away from the fact that they are both impractical and ugly. A bitter double blow.

There are other, more petty, house crimes which might carry a milder sentence of being slapped about a bit and promising to remove the offending material. My most hated of these is pillars. Now, if you happen to have a large Roman villa, carved columns and stone mantels are fine. If you own a semi-d with a front garden you can't swing a cat in, they seem, well, excessive. Do they worry that the builders have not done enough to stop the door from falling in? Do they long to live in a government building? I just don't get it and there must be slapping of heads. There are some pillar- house owners who extend this sickness to elaborate balcony fronts. Which is fine if you have a balcony and not fine at all if you are trying to pretend that there is a balcony on your garage roof. These people should be made jump from the offending railings to their hopeful injury below.

The criminal imagination doesn't stop there. Other tasteless house owners continue to rage against the minimalist approach. Let me take you to the dark place, which would be dark if it weren't for the light from a cheap PVC lamppost. Now, don't get me wrong, it is good to have light in your garden, particularly on those long drunken journeys to your front door. It is not good, on the other hand, to assume that this light should be supplied by an oversized piece of "decorative" black plastic. The mind boggles. Perhaps they have such an overblown perception of their own patch in the world, they truly believe that they need a lamppost to guide their visitor in the trek from gate to door? This madness extends to carriage lamps on the wall of the house. Are they expecting weary travellers on trusty steeds to come calling for stables and refreshments? These creations also come in delightful white PVC. Enough said.

There are many and varied house crimes. It seems that almost every house has some small misdemeanours. These I feel can be forgiven with a warning and clip round the ear. These include stained glass door panels, german style post boxes, china dogs in the porch, animal heads on your entrance pillars. The list is seemingly endless of the awful things people do to their houses.

I was going to include chimney protectors in that list but after a quick survey, I'm told people find these things useful and I must take the time to dispute this. For those of you who are as bewildered as I was when I first heard of them, these are little caps that you put on your chimney pot to stop birds nesting in or falling down your chimney. An interesting idea, but when was the last time a crow fell down your chimney? When was the last time you lit a fire only to be greeted by the sounds of upset birds? I would like to point out that I come from the country, where there probably more crows and no one has chimney protectors there. Y'see, there is this man who can fix all these problems - he is called a chimney sweep. If you have a fire, chances are you will get the chimney cleaned once in a while and if you do find that rare chimney diving bird, you can look after it then. This is all I have to say on the matter.

There are two crimes, which I have saved until last as I believe they are punishable only by death. These are specific houses, which I will try not to identify too much. They are both on the Northside of the city and not too far away from each other. They are both on main thoroughfares to facilitate maximum effect. One is a small ish semi, built the same as all the houses that surround it. Except for one, sadly very noticeable difference. The front of their house has ramparts. Yes, you did read that correctly. Instead of the also criminal but less offensive stone cladding, these people have gone for a castle shaped frontage for their home. It is the ugliest thing I have ever seen on a house, ever. Do they imagine that they will be attacked by Vikings sailing in from Howth? Do they wish to pour boiling oil on the TV licence man? It does not bear thinking about and these people should be killed immediately.

The other house is a large house. It is detached but is again the same as all the other houses on the estate. It has an extension down the side, which my sources inform me is an indoor swimming pool. Very impressive you might think, until you see what is outside the house. These people have white lampposts, carriage lamps, stained glass, leading and pillars. It's a house crime hunter's wet dream! What is particularly offensive about this house though, is the pillars. They are not even real pillars - they are half pillars stuck on the sides of the wall. I'm sure the owner dreamed of a Romanesque bathhouse but when he woke up he had a big shed with stuck on bits of plaster. Again, death must befall them.

I want all of you who read this and agree with me to write to your local TD and we can get this show on the road. If you have read this and recognised your own house crimes, then maybe there is still hope for you. Remember less is more and chimney protectors are just bonkers.

by

Anita Kiely
18th September 2002

Anita Kiely lives in a rented house.

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