PHOTO: Real estate copywriters seem to believe that being envied is something many of us desire. Photo: Stocksy

When I was a teenager and living at Umina on the NSW Central Coast, I had a neighbour called Violet. Every Sunday morning, Violet would change into her old clothes and dust the brown electricity meter box that hung off the side of the house.

Then she’d go around her lawn with a can of Mister Sheen and polish all the gnomes and an extended family of concrete Mexicans. As the night fell, I’d be riding home on my dragster and spot her down on her hands and knees with a Dolphin Eveready in one hand, waging warfare with the army worms that attacked her perfect carpet of Buffalo Grass.

READ MORE VIA DOMAIN