Council turned up at my place to dig a dirt moat and chop down beloved trees. But I got my revenge

Opinion

November 13, 2026 — 11:30am

The concreters from the council have been here for nearly two weeks, laying an unwanted, unneeded footpath outside our place.

Every day about 11 cars noodle down our service road. Every six to 10 hours a neighbour drifts past with a dog on the wide, wide grassy nature strips that run to the kerb. New York it ain’t.

One reason we moved to the beach was to escape suburbia. Footpaths are suburban. And now we have one.

And the boys dug an extra metre of grass from the nature strip so reaching my car parked the other side of the new footpath means leaping a dirt moat, like the Interflora man. It’s tricky to stick the landing, so dirt gets tracked everywhere.

Yesterday I nabbed a bloke who turned out to be from the council, not just a contractor. The motherlode of authority! He waved at the dirt moat: “We’ll put in grass seed.”

Righto. So I’ll long jump for months until it sprouts? “Put down a paver,” I said. He shrugged: “We don’t do pavers.”

It’s a long time since I’d fought so hard for composure: “In this instance, it really would be best if you did pavers.”

Worse, the council fella was supervising the removal of two mature ornamental plum trees from the nature strip. Think black-purple leaves, a riot of pink spring blossoms. In the way of progress, apparently.

A tradie with a chainsaw killed them and their bodies were fed into a chipper. Bit dramatic, but I swore and shook my fist. He advanced a few paces, revving the chainsaw like a dickhead.

I’m ropeable. Boiling. At the lost plums, the covering of the planet with more concrete, the dangerous road that remains, the feeling of powerlessness.

So I have a plan of my own. Revenge. When the last bit is poured next week, I’ll write in the wet cement. Something permanent. Something brutal, elegant and pithy that disses The Man and destruction in three words.

Good news: science says I’ll enjoy it.

Psychologists have long sold us the “bittersweet” theory of revenge: a brief sugar hit, then guilt, regret and an angry hangover. Forgive and forget, we’re told.

A new review in the journal Emotion went looking for that hangover and came back mostly empty-handed.

Karolina Dyduch-Hazar, a psychologist at Germany’s University of Würzburg, and colleagues pooled 54 research reports spanning half a century and more than 14,600 people. Some were lab volunteers, deliberately wronged by another participant. They got even with mild electric shocks, overly spicy food, blasts of loud noise, pins in voodoo dolls. Others imagined revenge or recalled real-life payback.

The verdict: getting even feels good.

Pleasure, satisfaction, a sense of control restored, and little sign of feeling worse later. Brain and facial-muscle readings suggested people enjoyed revenge more than they let on. The buzz peaked mid-act and faded, but left no nasty aftertaste.

My favourite finding? Imagined revenge was linked to unpleasant feelings. Actually doing it wasn’t. Stewing is worse than striking.

The caveats: this is petty stuff, not blood feuds. Dyduch-Hazar warns that revenge on a partner, friend or colleague can poison the relationship and kick off a cycle of retaliation.

Cool. Council isn’t my friend.

Two hours after the paver showdown, a ute pulled up. A man got out and laid two pavers across the moat.

I’d been had. It’s the cleverest revenge of all: give the angry woman what she asked for, fast, and watch her grievance die. What do I write in the concrete now? “Thanks for the pavers”?

The study says the pleasure lives in the act. Mine’s been confiscated.

Except for the plums. No paver fixes that. My set-in-stone message: “Two plum trees lived here.”

Eleven cars a day will drive past it. Nobody will walk on it. But I’ll know.

Kate Halfpenny is an author and the founder of Bad Mother Media.

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