Fight Fire with... Bamboo??

Living in the burbs can be a curious thing. It's like a weird alternate universe and it can drive you to terrible dark things!

I have spent all my life apart from the last few years living in the heart of the city in a selection of flats/apartments usually in a communal block with some 8 or 9 other people. The crazy places I have stayed all have their associated crazy stories. But perhaps none go as wild far, as now. When I find myself now...

The story started simply enough. We had a kid, got a house with a garden out in the burbs as lots of people do. The thing we love most about our house could be said to be the garden. It's awesome.

Our neighbours too, are all fantastic people. Which in turn has led to our first world problem of trying not to offend them because they are so nice by planting something to block them out.

Does that sound mean?

To fill you in. There we were in our lovely, lovely garden. It is ringed with high hedges on every side except for the back which has a big ole 8 foot high fence. Our garden, therefore, is completely private. Obviously, for all the arcane shit we get up to. Well alright then, me taking my top off and getting my nipples out when its sunny :O)

Last year our nice friendly neighbours decided to get decking in their garden. Decking. Planks of wood all over your lovely grass. I think it is a particularly British thing, I could be wrong, please tell if I am?

I thought nothing of this, there was much sawing and hammering from their garden. The next day the sun popped out and I relaxed in a garden chair. My shy nipples peeking out anxiously at the sun. I reassured them softly that it was ok, no-one could see.

Alright Mate! Boomed my neighbour towering over the back fence. It appeared as if he was wearing stilts. The fence which used to lord over us both, now only coming up to his stomach on his side.

Eh, Alright mate I replied, thinking that shouting WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK IS GOING ON HERE might be a tad extreme.

A conversation followed in which he demonstrated his decking which for some insane reason seemed to be built some 4 foot high above his grass.

I staggered into the house. My torso aching with the violent retraction of my poor little nips. What to do? Our private sanctum had been violated. The days that followed later were an endless parade of conversations over the fence. All I wanted was to sit in the relative silence and peace of my garden. But no, it was not to be. I had to come up with some kind of plan.

I locked myself away in my man cave and thought long and hard, Days later, gaunt and unshaven I emerged with a plan. I couldn't just plant a big giant tree because my ingrained Britishness thinks it terribly rude if I just overtly put something there to block them out. So instead

I bought bamboo seeds, phylostachys nigra to be precise which can grow to a staggering 4 metres in height. In the dead of the night I planted about fifty million of them all along the back fence. My plan? For it to grow gradually into an impenetrable shield and for me to act so very surprised when it did. A bit like Hugh Grant when the polees caught him with that lady of the night.

Fast forward a year, the beast at the back has now thrust several canes out of the earth as wide as my forefinger, they seem to be visibly getting taller and look kinda mean. Within two weeks of appearing, they are now chest height. Some people have warned me that this kind of bamboo is a ferocious spreader and that it will take over my garden and my house and everyone in it.

Despite being slightly frightened by the triffid like nature of its growth. So be it.

Am I wrong? Will the bamboo eventually sneak in and body snatch me in the middle of the night?

Have I unleashed a monster?

Should I just have manned up and bought a big giant fucking tree?