Isolated

**Update - Wednesday 7th June**

Today is the first day in my 37 (plus a few) years on this planet that I have genuinely felt scared. I've been in car accidents, I've slipped down cliffs, yet none of that compares to how I feel right now. I'm sure I'm just being stupid but with all that has been going on, another part of me is thinking "nope, maybe this time your card is numbered". 

I was out the front of my shop helping my driver to load up - he had to park over the other side of a main road - when a traffic warden turned up. As you will see below that is a very rare occasion. One of the barbers had his car parked on the double-yellows (he'd been there almost 2 hours when the warden turned up; was there for 10 yesterday). He told some bullshit about how he'd just arrived for work, was unloading his work kit and was about to move, so got away with it. The warden then started talking to my driver (who has the subtlety of a brick) who was telling him how we've had issues since we first moved in but they've got a lot worse in the past few years, and how I was told restricted parking could potentially be put in place if we paid £5k to the council, but that money wouldn't guarantee and would only see us moved up the list! He said how the council had assured me a few years after I was offered the chance to bribe them, that the 18 flats opposite would not be allowed to be built without the restricted parking being put in place; that never happened. He then called me over to tell the warden about how I'd complained to the council (along with residential neighbours) about the parking issues on a weekly basis yet nothing had been done. As he was talking to me the barber came walking back down and the look he threw me was even more terrifying than the one my Mum used to give me when I was in trouble as a kid. As he got back into the shop he slammed the door, started ranting to the other bloke in there (one of the 'main men') and I heard words like "that fat cunt from the flower shop" and "she'll get what's coming to her" shouted out loud enough for me to hear. When I looked around he was stood in the window staring out at me, brough he finger up to his throat and did the old index across the neck move. Of course I have no witness to this; my driver was walking off at this point, the traffic warden facing down the road and to be honest even if I did our local police force are so tight in pockets of these guys nothing would be done. One of them warned me ages ago to "watch my back, and keep quiet", so if I do go missing, or wind up dead in a ditch somewhere, definitely use a police force from outside my area, or my case files might just get "accidentally lost". 

Mind you, thinking about it, I wouldn't be surprised if this mornings visit wasn't down to the guy who owns the barbers for he came into my shop last week and started asking me a lot of questions; he wanted to know who my landlord was, how much rent I pay, if it was the same person who owns another shop (I know for a fact he knows the people who work/own this other shop). He was also complaining about the lack of parking and pointed to 2 cars outside that were taking up spaces. He said to me "and these seem to be here all day; I have no idea who they belong to". I looked at him with a confused stare before pointing out that one of them works for him, and the other is working next door to him and is a friend who I'd seen him chatting to just that morning! If he was the one to get the warden out - a quick bung to one of the council members in his pocket - it now looks as though it is down to me. "Snitches get stitches" don't they say?

**Original Post**

Never before have I felt so isolated when it comes to my place of business; I'm actually at the stage where I've just told my business partner that maybe we should just 'call it quits' and walk away, something I never thought I would do, especially as the premises we are in I promised myself I'd have as a 15 year old. Right now though 4 of my neighbours are having a conflab, all of them leaning/sitting on my car. I can't go and say anything because I have been warned by the police not to confront any of them. The reason for this is because they are all part of an Albanian gang who are very quickly taking over our area. I hoped when my new direct neighbour opened his doors 6 weeks ago it meant I would finally have someone on my side, someone to look out for me, yet he is one of the 4 out there. Turns out one of his cousins is married to one of turkish lads who is in with the albanians. 

I park my car out the front of my shop to keep an eye on it; if I don't and have to park where my camera's don't pick it up then they let my tyres down. They do this because they want me out. They've managed to take over all the other shops in my parade, plus they own the property at the end of our parade; they have this week started their building project to tear down the house on the property land, before erecting 8 apartments, which will be used to house their staff, as the current property was. A property which has been raided by immigration 4 times in the past year, each time them failing to find the illegals who have been smuggled over, because at least 15 minutes before each raid is about to take place, they all take flight and scarper. I now trust neither our local council - who have been proven many times to be 'on the take' and corrupt, yet like those in central government who have also been found guilty of such things, they get away with it -  who fall over backwards for the others whilst doing nothing to help those of us who can't afford to grease their dirty palms. I don't trust the police either, for I witnessed 2 officers after the first raid walk down the alley at the back of my shop, point directly at the security camera we have out there, before turning tail quickly and walking away. At no point did they come to ask me for the footage; when I mentioned it to a local plod I got told "they can't have seen it" because they would have 'definitely wanted to view the footage'. They pointed at it; they saw it. What little faith I had left in our local force dissipated that day. 

I swore I would not let them wear me down, that I will be dragged out of my shop by my cold, dead feet, yet right now, if someone offered me the use of their garage to work from I would probably accept. They hounded my last local neighbour to the point she sold the property to them, at a lot less than she could have got for it, because she couldn't stand the constant harassment from them any more. They don't do that to me because their intimidation tactics during the lockdowns (when their barber continued working throughout by cutting hair in the back of one of their takeaways - I'll come back to that in a mo) failed. They own 4 of the 5 units on my parade. At the time of lockdown only one of them was allowed to open, and that was one of their takeaways, so to all intents-and-purposes I was here alone. To anyone who walked by the front of the shop, at least. Out the back was a different story, and after I had the police turn up one day because I had my front shop door opened to let in some air - luckily I had a stair gate across with a note saying I wasn't allowed to let anyone in, or serve them at the door (as per the rules of the time) they told me if I'd not had those measures in place then I could have been fined £10000, and that because they'd been called out to me once, they would be checking on me regularly - good to know they have nothing better to do, like solve real crimes, or stop these people from taking over. As a result I left the front locked and opened the back, which leads onto a shared alleyway. Again, I put the gate up, but many a day I would walk from the front to the back of the shop and find 2 of them (the albanians, turks, iraq's - whichever nationality they claim to be on the day (their names all change on a daily basis too)) just standing there, staring in at me. One day they stood there for over 3 hours, just watching as I went about my daily business. It got to the stage I'd nod and say "hello" each time I made my way towards them. In the end I put up some dark net curtains, so I could still get airflow, but they weren't able to see in. They moved to the front, thinking they had got one up on me, only to realise I have blinds over the windows, so I dropped those down. It meant the shop became very dark, but it was worth it to see the look on their faces as the blinds dropped between us. 

At the same time the police came out to me, I started to notice a lot of men walking by the front of my shop on the diagonal; there is no need for them to do this unless they were heading to the takeaway, which was closed during the day, opening only for a few hours each evening. Then I saw the barbers were still parking their cars up the road; that's when I realised what they were up to. Whilst the takeaway was closed during the day, the barbers were using their kitchens to continue cutting hair. The genuine barbers over the road (and countless other's in the country at the time) abided by the rules, but not this lot. Did the police come out and threaten them with a 10k fine and the promise they would be keeping an eye on them? Of course not! I wonder what percentage of takings found their way into the police's back pockets?

Each of our shops has their own forecourt out the front, and it's a fairly big area for each; mine is 5 x 6  metres. They would often - and still do if I don't get some planters out there quick enough - park across mine, to the point on more-than-one-occasion they've been so close to my shop door I've had to climb over their bonnet to get out. They will do this during my shops opening hours, thereby blocking any customers from being able to enter. If I get my planters out early enough to stop them - providing they haven't parked one of their vehicles there overnight - they will often spend ages wandering back-and-forth across my forecourt, and immediately outside my shop door, whilst they shout into their phones, again putting off any potential customers from entering. One go actually moved my planters one day so he could dump his car on my forecourt. They do the same down the main road that runs along outside, parking wherever and for however long they want, regardless of any restrictions. It doesn't matter if it's on the double yellows, the white zigzags or across someone's drive, and not a thing gets done about it, yet you watch a customer go over by just 1 minute in the car park across the road, and the traffic enforcers appear as if from nowhere, and are all over them, grinning as they write the parker a ticket. 

I love my little shop - I may have already mentioned this :) When it came up for rent at a time I was in a position to take it on, I was as happy as a pig in shit. I told my friend on our way home from school "I'm going to have that as my flower shop one day". It took me over 20 years but I made it, I got it and I was so happy here for a decade. I tried multiple times to get the landlord to sell it to me, because I had this plan that once I reached retirement age I'd then convert it into a little retirement home for myself. My neighbour behind the shop offered to sell the bottom part of his garden to me so I would have had outdoor space as well, but the landlord won't sell (he's had from me over my 14 years 3 times the amount he paid for it, and I was still willing to pay the market price to purchase it). Now, I think, maybe fate intervened and there's a reason he wouldn't sell, because as much I love being here, I absolutely hate being here too. The trouble is, because they've taken over the area I can't afford to move, so my options now are to put up with it and hope-against-hope that something will happen for them to have to move away from our area, or I keep going until such time as they have driven away all my customers, or (and this would break me) I lock the door and walk away from all of it before they get chance to drive everyone away. No idea what I will do if it comes to having to walk away, as this is all I have ever done, all I have ever wanted to do, and I'd let people bully me my whole life until I finally stood up to several of them a few years ago. I vowed to never let anyone bully me again, but when it comes to locking the doors and having to scrub someone else's toilet for a living, or sticking to my guns and finding myself not waking up one morning due to some completely random, and unforeseeable accident, I think I'd rather scrub the loos, or end up begging under a bridge, than find myself taking a 'dirt nap'. 

I find hating someone is a waste of energy and does you no favours, yet I hate the people in my town who have allowed this to happen; the people who have been voted into power by the wealthier types who reside in the town, who don't have to deal with this on their own doorstep. It will come back to bite them on the ass one day though, because for now the ones taking over need the council and police on their side so they can push through their agendas; pretty soon they will have the foothold they need, then the councillor and police officers will no longer have a bargaining power to benefit themselves any more. The ones who are meant to serve and protect their communities will one day find themselves in the position of being owned by those they have been happy to allow to take over. I don't believe in karma but I do believe they will be made to regret allowing it to happen, and I really hope I am there to see it when they eventually fall. 

Of course, I could always win the lottery, get left an huge inheritance from a relation I knew nothing about, or get whisked away by a multi millionaire, at which point all of this will become moot. Until that happens though I find myself becoming more-and-more isolated with each set and rise of the sun.