mischief

Mischief is a lovely old word that hardly anyone uses anymore. The dictionary defines it as naughty behaviour, troublesome but not wicked. The adjective mischievous, minus the second i so many people like to include in its pronunciation, means playfully naughty.

We’ve had some mischief here at the units. It all begins when I’m resident in Bendigo and Mo lives here in Unit 1. Eggs land on the roof of Unit 2. Dan is outraged, believes it’s a personal vendetta. Trajectories are estimated, the units next door implicated, but no miscreant is ever impeached.

Episode two is the burning of the bins, on bin night, standing at attention like silent soldiers up on the roadside, waiting to be emptied and dismissed at dawn. Dan sees the conflagration as further evidence of a personal vendetta.

Last night the JRT spooks some time around ten. He doesn’t seem to know the source of his umbrage, barks at the air, then rushes the front door. I open it to prove the absence of trespassers. The JRT tears into the dark dripping garden but it’s empty. He pisses and comes back inside happy.

In the night I hear a strange noise, not the usual thud of Sunday’s Age landing. I imagine it’s missed its mark, landed somewhere unusual. Dawn reveals a broken driveway light, the outer sphere untwisted and dumped in the garden, the globe and fitting smashed. A month past the sphere has a hole the size of a tennis ball in it.

Mischief? Young boys are the most likely source of mischief, but young boys are unlikely at four in the morning. Older boys aren’t into mischief; they just destroy stuff, snap the light-post off at ground level and hurl it through a window or onto a roof.

I replace the fitting and the globe, screw the sphere back into place, and again the light works. In fixing mode I turn off the water at the meter and finally replace the broken washer in my shower. When I turn the water on again, the pressure is improved. Weeks ago the pressure dies. Someone has turned it down. Not me.  

Mischief.  

  

Rock on.