It’s strange how neighbours influence your life. It sometimes fells as if you are living part of their life and they are part of yours. People are herd animals, that’s the way we’ve evolved. It can be a help sometimes and also problematic.
From four onwards, I grew up in a small rural village where everybody knew everybody and commented on what everybody said and did. I remember being warned by parents that there were lots of people in Willaston who knew me even though I didn’t know them. No need for drones and CCTV then!
We moved to another smaller hamlet about five miles away where it was even easier to keep watch on us. We kept Indian Game Cockerell on the acre of ground attached to our new home. Some helpful neighbours suggested we had them for (illegal) cock-fighting. We just ate them – the cockerells, not the neighbours.
The neighbours who were especially memorable were ones who generously decided to share their noise, sometimes late at night, sometimes with intimate details of domestic arguments with accompanying bangs and crashes. Entertaining sometimes if you see it on t.v. but at least there’s an off switch.
Having moved about a good deal for work and study reasons, I’ve seen a variety of neighbours and one thing I have learned is that it’s important to have your own front door, even if you get on well with the the person on the other side of it. Nobody gets on with everybody all of the time, just some people sometimes or most people sometimes. Everybody is somebodies difficult neighbour sometimes but given good will, forbearance and a following wind it’s possible to avoid open warfare.