WordPress Daily Prompt: Good Fences?

Who are your neighbors? Are you friends with them, barely say hi, or avoid them altogether? Tell us a story — real or invented — about the people on the other side of your wall (or street, or farm, or… you get the point).

Photographers, artists, poets: show us NEXT DOOR.




I chose a photo of the neighbours gone by. Although the year was 1945 and I was still a twinkle in mum’s eye, my dad not yet having returned from his soldiering somewhere in Europe, I grew up in this street and many of the faces are still familiar.

I could start with grandad, the bloke with the grey hair second from the left at the back, the lady next to him with the silver top hat being my grandmother who I never really got to know. She died when I was four months old.

But this is all about neighbours and there are a few familiar faces. In the front row, the three ladies from the right were sisters and our next door neighbour family. They lived in a two storey attached house the same as ours. It was a small square in one of the poorer parts of London, but they were all rich in heart I suppose you could say. My memories are of a brick wall separating our gardens, although from the second floor of our house you had a good view over everything. I grew up in my house and the family next door were always the neighbours. They had a row of chicken coups in the garden when I was smaller, but one day they disappeared. Two of the sisters lived on the ground floor with the mother, an elderly lady: the third sister was the only one to be married and she lived on the top floor with her husband. They had no children. It was a time when you did not just enter each other’s houses, the homes were the castles and communication was mostly over the garden wall. Our lives were similar. There were no refrigerators, just a so-called safe in the back yard where you kept the perishables. This was fine in winter, when the outside water pipes froze in the cold temperatures and the food stayed almost frozen and fresh. Summer was a different aspect. The “safe” was absolutely no good as it got quite hot, the sun reflecting on the concrete of the houses. I remember my mum filling the sink in the kitchen with cold water and submerging the butter and milk in the water to keep it fresh.

I probably knew a few of the other neighbours in the photo, but time passes and the memories of familiar faces fade.

On the other side of the brick wall there was a house where Ernie and his wife lived – an elderly couple. My dad always invited Ernie to watch the English football cup final on our television as we were one of the few families in the street that had a television. Ernie’s wife’s sister lived in the ground floor of the house with her daughter. I remember seeing the daughter a few years ago. When the street was demolished most of the inhabitants moved to the same area as my mum and dad, the county/state of Essex. The daughter had become a very old lady. She was a single lady for many years, not having luck with the males. One day she married. It was whispered that she met her husband by newspaper contact. Who knows? But there were dubious rumours about him and suddenly he disappeared from view.

A little further along the street there was H’arry Murrell and his wife (we never really used the letter “H” in the East End. “arry was a pigeon fan, and his small garden had been converted into pigeon coops. Once a day he would let them fly, encouraging them to return by shaking a bag of pigeon feed and shouting “come’on, come’one”. I never heard the pigeons talk, but they seemed to recognise these words. His wife just suited “arry”. I remember her as a lady always clothes in a shapeless loose dress, or in her dressing gown, according to the time of day. They had a small dog and Mrs. Murrell would take the dog for walks early in the morning in her dressing gown and slippers on her bare feet.

Opposite lived Esther Bell. Mum told me it was a jewish family originally, although I never met Mr. Bell, as he had passed on before I arrived. Esther’s favourite job was cleaning the door handle. It was placed in the middle of her black wooden door and probably made of brass. It caught your eye, shining almost gold. The black of the door surrounding the handle had been bleached by the constant cleaning over the years. Esther had a daughter who was married. I only saw her husband leaving the house dressed in a suit and hat going to work. After he left she always seemed to be having a problem with her television as the repair man from the shop around the corner would call in. It must have been a complicated problem with the T.V. as he would arrive before lunch and leave during the afternoon. One day we all noticed that the daughter would become a mother.

In the house opposite lived Mr. and Mrs. Green. They had a son, but he never returned from the war. Mrs. Green was proud of her house and  I remember her living room being full of ornaments. Of course I had my friends, kids that were growing up after the war. There was a very large house at the end of the next square (there were two squares) and the family living there seemed to be permanently growing all the time. One of the daughters was a school friend. There were two sons with Down syndrome, but they were just part of the daily life of the square. The eldest daughter married and took the top floor of another house in the street. Her son also moved into one of the houses after marrying and so the family seemed to spread everywhere.

Between the two squares there was a street. Traiffic was sparse and the street had a wonderful slope. In the evenings we kids would meet to try out our skates. Not the modern shoe type as today: a metal framework strapped them over your shoes and we would sail from the top of the slope to the bottom. I remember mum always closed the door when I was out with the skates. She was always worried I would have an accident.

I could continue with all my street memories. I found a aerial photo of the street in a group I belong to on Facebook, just to show how closely packed together we were. Today the street is a small park.





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Sometimes the mind boggles

Looks nice - a fairly new estate somewhere in a small village where everyone likes to go about their own business. They say you can choose your friends but unfortunately you cannot choose your relations. This is also a problem, but there is another aspect of this saying. You can choose your friends, but you cannot choose your neighbours. Neighbours is more luck than anything else. I must say that all my neighbours are friendly people, going about their daily business and minding their own business.

I did once mention our meeting that we have once a year to discuss various "problems" that may arise and mentioned Mr. Black, also know as Mr. Loud Mouth, who likes to organise things. He usually has the mandate for his next door neighbour. She never attends the meetings and probably no-one else would carry the responsibility of representing such a person. This next door neighbour is a widow and has a son. Now this son has never really had a job to go to every day. He is around 30 years old. He did try to move out once but came back again. He has been known to do strange things in town with the result that in one store he is not even allowed to enter. If he uses the lift you notice it by the smell of a joint afterwards. Sometimes he even throws the smoked joints into other peoples gardens. However, they are a honourable family so you just put up with it.

His mother tends to beat her carpets over the balcony, making a dust cloud which tends to fall upon the people living at the bottom. Once she set fire to her balcony flower trough at Christmas by burning a candle in between the holly. One of the neighbours called up to her what was happening, but she strolled out to the balcony, took the plant in and said we shouldn't make such a fuss. Mr. Black and his wife find she is ok as a neighbour and has no problems with her.

It may be that we can ignore this lady, but not her son. There was a small problem some time ago with another neighbour because he had put furniture in the corridor to dry out after we had flooding, which absolutely bothered no-one. She decided to verbally attack those neighbours (very nice people) and my other half asked why she has to bother them all the time, after all the furniture would only be there for a couple of days. Her son came down the stairs and helped his mother by threatening the neighbour and my husband with his fists and remarked we can settle the problem outside. Luckily the neighbour just laughed and my husband refrained from continuing the conversation. The best was that the mother of this street fighting son thanked him for supporting his mother and coming to her rescue. There was no question of rescue, there was an argument going on and not an assassination.

We all went home, but the son decided to remove the furniture and throw it around and give it a few kicks. Everything on photo now, but believe me there is nothing you can do. Through the legal advice of one of my family members (my son), he said unless the police actually see it, they will do nothing and if you process it could pull itself into infinity, cost a lot of money and the only people that get anything out of it are the lawyers.

The neighbour's son now has a new game, probably because he is bored not having anything to do all day. He likes to listen to very loud rock music (of a certain kind that I associate with a certain type of right wing political party). Lots of four letter words in it and he sings loudly along with it. Even Mr. Black must here it, but up to now Mr. Black has made no comments. Last week the son chopped up some wood outside for his mother. I don't think he was very happy about it. As he was chopping he spoke in a very loud voice, muttering stupid things which everyone heard to the extent that a neighbour said to us she realises what we have to put up with. Thank goodness it seems that people are waking up.

There was also the occasion where the wife of our neighbour was waiting for the local train and son No. 1 was also there. He did not hesitate to play with a knife all the time.

What do you do with such a young man in the house. Basically ignore him and just hope that eventually he will smoke so many joints that he will go on a trip and never come back. I wonder if his mother still thinks that her son is such a wonderful person. I did hear that they do have a misunderstanding now and again. His mother does sometimes mix up things between what actually was said and happened, to what she thinks was said and what happened.

A week or so ago she wrote an e-mail to the people running our places complaining that it is just not tidy where we are. Gardens that look like allotments, people that have b-b-q grills outside and articles of clothing that hang around. It just doesn't fit into the surroundings, after all we have such a lovely mountain chain and a river near bye. Of course, the fact that she has about 20 palm trees on her balcony is something different. Personally I couldn't care less if she had a pine tree forest on the balcony, but why does she have to write such stupid. things. Everyone got a copy of the e-mail with the exception of us and another neighbour that speaks her opinion. Everyone just laughed at it and it will not be taken seriously. This lady is ill and I suppose her delinquent son does not really have a chance in life, but from my aspect the son is dangerous.

Our next meeting is next year in February/March. Perhaps Mr. Black realises by then that he would be better off not carrying the mandate for his next door neighbour.

The Garden

This was our garden until Friday morning at 8 o'clock. Actually it was a nice garden with bushes and shrubs and flowers. We cut most of it down last Autumn due to one of our neighbours that reminded us that we all have to look alike. At least that is his idea of doing it. He likes to take charge and organise things, and he dreamt that we would all have nice green laws with a hedge measuring up to his standards. We bought our flat on the ground floor and more or less we all do our own thing, but it seems that our own thing has limits. If anyone complains then you have to follow.

Most of the neighbours could not care less and let you get on with it, but there are always exceptions. This particular neighbour does not only get on my nerves, but on the nerves of most of the people living here. When his wife was looking at my garden eight years ago and saw I was planting things in the lawn (terrible crime) she did not say anything to me that it could bring problems, but said it to other neighbours. Now eight years later her husband decided to make an example at one of our meetings. He did not mention us by name, but my husband told him to say who he meant and he did.

Anyhow, I am not getting younger and to be quite honest it was getting a bit much for me, so what we used to have in Summer

we removed from the garden. Most of the plants I managed to save by planting them in my other garden behind the house. And no matter what Mr. Big Mouth says about that garden, it will be ignored. I had been talking to a few neighbours and they are all gradually getting to the same opinion as us, that he should keep his big mouth shut. Anyhow, in a way he did us a favour as we ordered the gardner and this is the result

It is amazing what you can do today. The gardener started at eight in the morning and was finished by twelve lunchtime. The lawn was delivered like a fitted carpet. I have to give it water enough for the next two weeks, a bit of fertiliser and then it should be ok for the first mow. I do hope that Mr. Big Mouth can now look through his curtains and his wife and are happy with the result. Note I have left a wide enough flower bed around the lawn to plant flowers.

In a way I am glad, it will be much easier to look after, but I just sometimes wonder why someone who has a country house a couple of hundred kilometers away and spends more than half a year there, has to act as if he owned the place when he is here.

I have been busy since yesterday evening. Our neighbours upstairs invited us for the evening meal and this evening we were invited for an aperitif with our next door neighbours, just to show that we do have some nice people living here. Actually this afternoon I was engaged in an hours conversation with another neighbour, whilst my other half was talking to her other half about lawn mowers. We have nice weather at the moment and everyone seemed to be outdoors in their gardens catching up on the work to be done and we were all meeting up again after a long Winter. Except for Mr. Big Mouth - I think he was busy on his balcony cleaning it up - might have been some weeds growing their from some stray seeds that landed there from my garden. Isn't life wonderful!