Neighbours

We have lived on this street for thirty six years. There have been many comings and goings. Generally, it is a quiet, law-abiding street where residents look after their homes and show good manners towards each other. In thirty six years, you get to know people while often maintaining a polite distance.

Immediately next to us there's Joseph and Mary. Now in their eighties, they have been perfect next door neighbours. We attended  the weddings of two of their grown-up children and they came to Frances and Stew's wedding in August 2019. Joseph was an academic in the metallurgy department of The University of Sheffield and Mary was a primary school teacher. The only time we ever really hear them is when Joseph is practising his french horn. He is in a local brass band. As time has passed, Mary has become noticeably less mobile as arthritis claims yet another victim. She and I share the same birthday.

On the other side there's Wally and Dolly and their teenage daughters Molly and Polly. They arrived in 2007 and though I am not fond of them they are generally quiet people - except when he's engaged in one of his D.I.Y projects that always involves a lot of banging. During the main COVID lockdown in 2020, he decided to build a big shed at the bottom of their garden which meant that on many of those lovely warm days I could not sit outside reading. Too much sawing, hammering and drilling. They call that shed their studio but in the past five years they have hardly used it.

Directly opposite us there's Carol and Nigel and their teenage daughters Lucy and Laura. Actually the girls were not conceived with Nigel's kind assistance. Fourteen years ago, their blood father Maurice the laser scientist hooked up with a German work colleague and buggered off to Southampton to live with her. Lucy has special needs and is on the autism spectrum. She is picked up by a taxi driver every morning and brought home by taxi in the late afternoon. Her special school is twenty five miles away. The school fees and the taxi bills are all paid for by cash-strapped Sheffield City Council.

On the other side of Joseph and Mary lives a German woman called Hanna and her teenage son Lukas. His electrician father did a Maurice several years ago - buggering off with his new fancy woman.  Hanna is lovely and when Lukas was little I used to whistle the theme tune to "Postman Pat" when I knew he was playing in his garden. A kind of magic through the hedges. He remembers it to this day.

On the other side of Wally and Dolly there's Gertrude who has lived in the same house for sixty years. She is ninety now and gradually, like Mary, being claimed by the arthritis beast. She has always had an upbeat, cheerful attitude to life but nowadays you can see the pain in her eyes. I hope to god that that nasty creature does not get me or Shirley as more years trundle by. Stay away Arthur Itis! Not wanted here!

Very often when I go to our back door to put vegetable waste or teabags in our compost caddy, I think of Sharon who lived just a few doors away. One evening she was doing the same when she tumbled down her outdoor concrete steps and broke several bones - including her skull. She was never the same again and was dead within three years - at the age of seventy.

There are many more pieces of information I could convey about our neighbours but  I am drawing a line at this point...↓ ↓ ↓

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We never really choose our neighbours do we? People randomly come together - often for years on end. On the whole, I think Shirley and I have been pretty lucky with our neighbours. None of them ever behaved as if they came from Hell though they might not say the same of us!

P.S. In case you had not guessed, for privacy reasons, all actual neighbours' names were replaced in this blogpost.