Hello friends. This is my first post, please be gentle with me. If this is the wrong section, please help me move it somewhere.
My Aunt Emily came over the other day. She was distraught at being poorly treated in her retirement home and wanted to live with me. Here is the story she related to me.
Aunt Emily lives in a retirement village. Along her lane, there is another resident, Mrs K, who had been appointed to oversee amicable relations between all other residents in that lane. Aunt Emily had two neighbors, Alice and Jane (all not their real names).
Some time ago, Alice, who was an avid gardener, had her most precious rose bush entirely torn up by a "wild animal". Alice was very upset for the whole of next week, and complained incessantly to anyone who would lend an ear.
Jane has a dog. While she frequently kept to herself, sometimes the dog would terrorise residents by barking and lunging at them. Once, the dog barked and lunged at Aunt Emily, frightening her. The dog was unleashed due to Jane's negligence and only by frantic scrambling, Aunt Emily managed to escape being bitten.
As a result, Aunt Emily and Jane did not see eye to eye because of this issue. Frequently, the two avoided each other, and Mrs K suspected they had a feud between them. However, Mrs K did not take any action for reconciliation or for speaking to either, because there was no evidence of such a feud.
To protect herself from canine attacks, and to record Jane's negligence, Aunt Emily quietly installed a digital closed circuit television system and recorders. The following weekend, Alice had her restored rose bush torn up again, overnight. Aunt Emily realized that the destruction zone was within sight of the cameras and rewounded the recordings from the previous night and discovered it was indeed Jane's dog which was causing the destruction.
Aunt Emily then informed Mrs K that Jane was violating the rules (which clearly stated dogs had to be kept leashed when outside their owner's home and enclosed firmly inside when not leashed). However, Mrs K learned that Aunt Emily was hostile to Jane due to a previous incident involving the dog, and concluded that Aunt Emily had abused the reporting system to further her vendetta against Jane. Mrs K then decided to convene a lane-meeting of the residents and censured Aunt Emily publicly for abusing the system. No mention was made of the mischievous dog, nor of Jane's negligence.
Poor Aunt Emily was flabbergasted. She arrived at my doorstep sobbing the previous night. I do not know what to say to console her.
