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Mad Doug Biker

I prefer animals to most people.
Location
Craggy Island
A neighbour keeps knocking at the door and I have a pretty good idea of who it'll be, except I am pretending I am not in.

It'll be the elderly neighbour asking me to go buy her Cigarettes, except, I have no intention of going out.

Am I being bad?
 

Rocky

Hello decadence
A neighbour keeps knocking at the door and I have a pretty good idea of who it'll be, except I am pretending I am not in.

It'll be the elderly neighbour asking me to go buy her Cigarettes, except, I have no intention of going out.

Am I being bad?

It sounds so much better when written by Robbie Burns:

There comes a rattle at the door,
A lassie I’ve heard a time before—
Wi’ weary guess, I ken the knell,
It’s Mistress Jean, I ken her well.

She’ll seek a hand, as oft she will,
Tae fetch her smoke frae ower the hill.
But I, wi’ stealth an’ breath held tight,
Sit dumb and still, hid oot o’ sight.

Nae coat I don, nae keys I seek,
I let the knock gang past, sae meek.
Nae errand this cold nicht I’ll dare—
I’m warm, an’ aye, I dinna care.

Am I a rogue? A heartless brute?
For lettin’ her plea turn destitute?
Or just a soul, wi’ waning grace,
That wants a nicht in peace and space?
 

Mad Doug Biker

I prefer animals to most people.
Location
Craggy Island
It sounds so much better when written by Robbie Burns:

There comes a rattle at the door,
A lassie I’ve heard a time before—
Wi’ weary guess, I ken the knell,
It’s Mistress Jean, I ken her well.

She’ll seek a hand, as oft she will,
Tae fetch her smoke frae ower the hill.
But I, wi’ stealth an’ breath held tight,
Sit dumb and still, hid oot o’ sight.

Nae coat I don, nae keys I seek,
I let the knock gang past, sae meek.
Nae errand this cold nicht I’ll dare—
I’m warm, an’ aye, I dinna care.

Am I a rogue? A heartless brute?
For lettin’ her plea turn destitute?
Or just a soul, wi’ waning grace,
That wants a nicht in peace and space?

Nice, I like that, but she's hardly a 'lass' as she must be about 85 if she's a day. Also, the shop is down the hill, not over it! 🤣

Urgh, I feel guilty now and it's not as if I have the "it's for your own good" standpoint - If she was going to have health issues from the smoking, then it probably would have happened by now and what years does she have left anyway? She might as well be happy.

That said, where's her family? 🤔
 
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Rocky

Hello decadence
Nice, I like that, but she's hardly a 'lass' as she must be about 85 if she's a day. Also, the shop is down the hill, not over it! 🤣

Urgh, I feel guilty now and it's not as if I have the "it's for your own good" standpoint - If she was going to have health issues from the smoking, then it probably would have happened by now and what years does she have left anyway? She might as well be happy.

That said, where's her family? 🤔

Perhaps you could buy her a big tin of tobacco and some rolling papers and teach her to roll her own?
 

Mad Doug Biker

I prefer animals to most people.
Location
Craggy Island
Perhaps you could buy her a big tin of tobacco and some rolling papers and teach her to roll her own?

But then she'll just ask me to go and buy those instead.

It's "20 of Club", that's what I've been told to say, as I am no smoker and they are at £14.30 a pack.
Where she has the money, I know not, but she doesn't seem to care.
 
Took Beautiful Daughter to visit the local Gymnasium (Grammar School) to see if it is for her. She really likes it, so now we have two possibilities.

Local state schools are very different from the local schools I went to in Manchester and the West Midlands in the 90's. For one thing, they look pleasant: Architects seem to have been involved in the planning, and the building was light and airy and fitted into the hillside.

It also appeared to have been repainted in the current century.

What astonished me personally, apart from the amount of glass, and none of it boarded up, was the almost complete absence of graffiti: I couldn't find any anywhere, not even scratched into the tables or the oak (oak!) benches in the corridor. In my school there was hardly a desk where you could see the cheap melamine surface through "Cheryl 4 Barry"; and "Spurs United city are tossers" or drawings of human anatomy. Here the only graffiti was in the art classroom.

In short, it looked like somewhere you might actually want to go to every day.

Also, the head teacher (who had a sense of humour, egads) actually seemed to grasp that there was a social part of being in school. The school had built a concept around the idea that some afternoons were there for students to socialise in a semi-formal environment.

What really threw me, was the teacher saying goodbye in the middle of the school; inviting us to "have a look around for yourselves" and leaving us there.

If you need me I'll be getting over the culture shock...
 
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A neighbour keeps knocking at the door and I have a pretty good idea of who it'll be, except I am pretending I am not in.

It'll be the elderly neighbour asking me to go buy her Cigarettes, except, I have no intention of going out.

Am I being bad?

No.

Her cigarettes are her responsibility, not yours. You could argue it's a valuable learning experience, either helping her learn to live without cigarettes, or organise herself to make sure she has what she needs and not demand things from others at a moment's notice.

Also, you can set your own boundaries: if you don't want to go out, you don't have to.
 
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