Gnome On A Pole

Status: Weird News
Mrs. Broomfield of Colchester has a serious problem. Her neighbor, Gnome Magic, has placed a gnome on top of a pole so that it stands higher than the hedge dividing their property. Mrs. Broomfield feels that the gnome is "peering" at her, and she's filed a complaint. EADT reports:
Tourism attraction Gnome Magic, which features 750 of the ornaments in various scenes, created some heightened debate when it raised one of its characters up on a pole to attract visitors.
Following an objection, a Colchester Borough Council planning officer decided the display needed planning permission and the Dedham-based attraction submitted an application to keep the gnome on high...
Yesterday Peter Chillingworth, chair of the committee, said: “The gnome, which is on a pole, was put up without planning permission and one of our officers decided it needed to be considered formally.”
"There were speakers for and against the gnome. A neighbour objected and was really quite rude about it. She said it peered over her hedge and spoiled her view."
I know how she feels. There's a jackalope head hanging on my wall that's giving me funny looks right now.

Gnomes

Posted on Tue Aug 01, 2006


Comments

Better a gnome than some guy named "Tom" peeping over the hedge.

My other question is how do you "spoil a vue over a hedge? Depending on height, all you would see is sky.
Posted by Lounge Lizard  on  Tue Aug 01, 2006  at  02:59 PM
If there was a gnome on a pole peering at me ... I can't continue, the sentence is so funny to me.
Posted by Dracul  on  Tue Aug 01, 2006  at  05:09 PM
Ooo - I just saved the Gnome Garden site to my favs. It's gotta be somewhere I wanna be. Thanks for more gnomeview, Alex.
Posted by stork  on  Tue Aug 01, 2006  at  07:01 PM
Oh, "peering" at her...
Posted by ratdoc  on  Tue Aug 01, 2006  at  07:13 PM
Maybe the neighbor just wants an unobstructed view of the sky, without some tacky advertising display ruining it. Sounds reasonable to me, even if the complaint was expressed oddly.

What has this to do with hoaxes?
Posted by Sam  on  Wed Aug 02, 2006  at  07:09 AM
>>What has this to do with hoaxes?<<

It has to do with gnomes, a topic which has its very own category on my blog.

I won't try to pretend that there's any real logic to my fascination with gnomes, except that gnomes are often accessories to pranks, which are related to hoaxes.
Posted by The Curator  in  San Diego  on  Wed Aug 02, 2006  at  08:57 AM
Gno worries, in that case!
Posted by Sam  on  Wed Aug 02, 2006  at  03:32 PM
It's possible that she's not a nutcase -- possibly, although she knows it's a gnome, when she catches sight of it her instinct is "there's a man looking at me" and that startles her before her brain says "it's just that darn gnome."

I've been in that situation before. One place I worked at had one of those cut-out standup photos of a man, and it was positioned in the lunch room. It startled me regularly for the first week or two, even though I knew what it was.
Posted by cvirtue  on  Sat Aug 05, 2006  at  07:26 AM
cvirtue, you must have missed the "Fake eyes on the coffee machine" discussion here a few weeks ago. The central claim being that even a cardboard cut-out of two eyes is enough to make people feel that they are being watched and therefore behave more honestly.
Posted by Big Gary  on  Sun Aug 06, 2006  at  01:06 PM
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