Everything in Ella’s insular and self-isolated little world was okay until the new neighbours moved in.  The kids with their noisy games, she could cope with, the dog with its occasional bouts of howling when bored and barking at unfamiliar noises, she could tolerate, but the one thing Ella couldn’t abide was that the man next door got up at 6am to mow the lawn.  That lawn was like a bowling green.  He was obsessed with it to the point where she saw him down on his knees with a pair of big tweezers plucking little sprouting weeds out before they got a chance to grow into an ugly carbuncle on his lawn.  The grass couldn’t be allowed to grow a hair’s breadth.  He was up and out with his noisy petrol mower early every morning and went over it at least twice to make sure he hadn’t missed a bit.  Ella was surprised he didn’t go out there measuring the green stripes he so carefully created and maintained on the lawn.

It got to the point where her sleep was being disturbed so much she hatched a cunning plan.  Then the neighbourhood went quiet for a while.  The lady in number 46, the local curtain twitcher that the kids called The Neighbourhood Watch, saw the Police call at the house, heard how distressed the new neighbour was about his grass reaching half an inch long and picked up the general gist of things.  His lawnmower had been stolen.  This had to have happened last Thursday when she was at her chiropody appointment or she’d have seen the culprit and made an anonymous call to the Police Crimestoppers phone line, as she always did when she saw something ever so slightly suspicious.  On, she had seen nothing, but she would be chatting to those who didn’t avoid her like the plague, to see what she could find out about the matter.  Her house could be next, although she had at least two locks on all her doors and some on the windows too. 

She never spoke to Ella, but on this occasion she made a point of doing so.  After all, she did live next door and rarely ventured out apart to look for that scruffy old moggie who pooped in her rose bed and peed up her bushes, or to potter about in her garden. 

“Good morning” she said.  Ella muttered “Hello” keeping her mind on pruning her hydrangea and her eyes on the job. 

“I heard your new neighbour had a spot of misfortune,” she persisted.

“Did they?” Ella grunted, putting her cuttings into a bin bag.

“You didn’t see anything, did you?”

“Are you the Police?” she replied getting somewhat irritated at the woman’s intrusion.  The woman giggled, water off a duck’s back, complimented Ella on her flowers and gave up as a bad job! 

Of course Ella knew all about it.  She took her hat off, swept her hair down flat like a man’s, put on her late husband’s overcoat on and slipped into their back garden while they were out.  Nobody would ever recognise her without a hat on.  She stole the lawnmower, muttering to herself “Now wake me you inconsiderate nuisance,” and advertised it for sale on a card in the supermarket.  Didn’t get a bad price for it either.  After all, only a scoundrel would rob a dear old lady.