He has a cunning plan.....

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The neighbour, he of the crisp white hat with the curly brim, has come up with a cunning plan...several of them, in fact.

Last seen the subject of an order forbidding him to pester his neighbours, he has been lying low and while life for those around him has been tranquil, it was, inevitably, too good to last.

The  Baldrick of Costa Rica has been applying his brain - or turnip - .to the problems besetting him and has come up with interesting answers.
Local opinion is that he owes a lot of this inspiration to the current live in ladyfriend who has an agenda of her own, but whether it is down to Baldrick or Baldricka we have had 'events, dear boy, events'.

The insult to his status of having been hauled up in court has decided him that the judicial way is the way to go....so he has laid before the court a claim that everyone who gave witness as to his activities was lying. Here, it is thought, lies the influence of the live in ladyfriend, who was severely warned of the consequences of perjury by the judge at the first hearing.
He'll have to look further afield for someone to represent him because no local lawyer would touch him with a bargepole after his bravura performance in court when his lawyer had to restrain him from attacking the judge...quite apart from the sure and certain knowledge that he will not pay the bill.

Excited by the prospect of the humiliation of the untermenschen in floppy brimmed sombreros who had dared to rise up against a superior being in a crisp white hat with a curly brim, he was just in the mood for the week long town fiesta.....drinking, helping to transport the bulls, drinking, dancing, drinking and strutting his horse's stuff at the tope...the traditional parade of horses and riders through the town.

Returning home, fired up and full of beans, he decided to show everyone who was whom in the local pecking order.
He took his cattle lorry out onto the road into the valley, drew it across so as to make any car wishing to pass slow to a crawl, and attached a hosepipe to the standpipe nearby.....then amused himself by aiming the hose at the open windows of the cars trying to pass, soaking the occupants.

He was still playing happily when he did it once too often...to the occupants of the police car sent out in response to furious 'phone calls from the drenched.
Not best pleased, the police made him put his lorry away and carted him off to the local nick for a full and frank discussion of events.
It seems he claimed that the occupants of each and every passing car had insulted his mother's reputation.... and although I'm pretty sure they didn't when dry I wouldn't mind betting a fair few of them did when wet.

We await the decision of the judge as to his fate...as several of the drenched were among those with protection orders.

Still, this has been only one facet of his interaction with the law.

For what follows you need to know that he still holds eight hectares of the initial two hundred which he bought from his father.....and only five of these are registered.
No one wants to buy unregistered land because of the time and costs involved in verifying ownership.

Now for the next two, or even three, cunning plans.
We were having a coffee in town weeks ago when we were approached by one of the chaps who specialise in putting together buyers and sellers of property.
His office is his mobile 'phone and the pocket of his jeans.

We were having a spot of bother with the neighbour, were we not?

We were...and so were others.

But the others don't have much money.

Neither do we.

This was shrugged aside...everyone knows that  Gringos have money.

Well, wouldn't it be worthwhile...just to have peace and quiet...if you were to buy his land...he's keen to be off, that court case shook him up.

Oh yes? And what's he selling? All of it, or is he keeping the house?

All of it.....all the five hectares registered and the three not and the house. He's even leaving the cane crushing machine.

And the price?

Only three hundred thousand dollars......

Noises of incredulity in English which, although not being a student of that language, it was clear that he understood.

It's only money...isn't a quiet life worth it?

He was given to understand that it was not.

The great pity is that the Scots reputation for being close with the bawbees has not entered Costa Rican culture, so the explanations were necessarily longer than in cultures where you could just say you were Scots and that would be an end to the matter.

About the same time, people saw bulldozers at work on the neighbour's property...on the unregistered bit. They were laying access roads and levelling out a building plot.
Then a monk surrounded by adoring ladies appeared to inspect the site...and speculation was rife.

Dona Estrella came up with the goods. One of the adoring ladies was a cousin goodness only knows how many times removed...who told all.

The neighbour had got in touch with the monk's order...though they sounded more like friars to me as they used to bring the Word to the more benighted areas of the country in the time of the neighbour's father.
He had told them that he wished to make a gesture to show his thanks to them for the services their order had given local people in the past, in honour of his father's memory.

Hew was, however, a poor man.
All he could offer was a three hectare plot of unregistered land for them to build a church....if they would see to the registration process, he would give them the land and help them with all the information he could to assist in the registration.

It is a beautiful site....high above the river with a waterfall below...and the monks, as we shall call them, agreed to the deal.
It appears that they have a church over on the Caribbean side of the country where the donations pile in and the chance to expand on this side must have seemed heaven sent.

The rainy season is approaching fast and the neighbour encouraged the monks to go ahead with the levelling works, before the rains closed down work for a year...thus the bulldozers....while they got on with the registration.

Now,  Dona Estrella has heard from her distant cousin again.....the monks will not be coming after all.

The neighbour had waited until the registration process was nearly complete...he was, after all, the source for most if the information involved....then took his copies of the paperwork off to the National Registry and registered the land in the name of a new company he had set up for the purpose.
The monks had paid for the legal work and for the levelling....and the neighbour now had a piece of land that was sellable...and a ready made site for building a house.

Now, had we been interested in handing over wads of the folding stuff to the neighbour to get rid of him, we would have been sadly disappointed......if we had bought his eight hectares for three hundred thousand dollars we would have checked the National Registry, found the five registered hectares and assumed the rest was still off the list.
With the result that we would have found ourselves with five hectares for which we have no use at a vastly over rated price.....and for a neighbour we would have had The Neighbour.....busy building himself a house with our money on the three hectares we had assumed we had bought!

A cunning plan or two indeed.



Cheating God!

Says  Dona Estrella

And to think he's in church every Sunday!

Well, he is, but it's more to pick up women than to commune with his Maker...the local church seems to be a mini version of St. Paul's in London before the Great Fire from what I gather.

However, he owes it to his status to behave as a prominent citizen so every Easter he takes part in the re.enactment of the Passion which passes through the streets of the town on Good Friday.
He is, inevitably, a Roman soldier.

Pity we can't change things this year.

Says Don Armando.

Like how?

Put the two thieves into the procession....the way he goes on he could represent both of them.





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