Neighbourhoods

Of exactitude in democracy

It is said that the traveller George Lewis bought a bundle of papers in Kashgar relating to the work of 11th century Uyghur scholars. Among the records of families and distinguished tradesmen of the settled tribes there is an account of a system of governance devised by the people of the Tarim Basin sometime before the sixth century BCE. In that region, the practice of democracy had attained such perfection that the membership of the committee for a single province numbered the population of an entire city, and the committee for the region itself numbered an entire province. In the course of time, these extensive arrangements were found somehow wanting, and so the Guild of Democraters devised a system whereby the committee was required to be of the same scale as the population, and coincided with it point for point. Less sympathetic to the science of democracy, later generations came to judge this system cumbersome, and discarded it unsentimentally. Occasionally in discreet meetings in the houses of scholars along the Silk Road, rumours circulate of the survival of pages from the records of those meetings, but no fragment has subsequently been discovered in the libraries of the world.

Welcome

New neighbours just moved in, round for drinks the other night, with this story -

The delivery van unloaded and away, two of the local lads hovering around. Hi lads, y'alright? They stare, no answer, no response. Oh well. A few minutes later, a knock at the door, there they are. 'We'd just like to welcome you.'

How close is St John now?

Stefan Gatward of Tunbridge Wells got fed up with the street name where he lived being wrongly displayed as 'St Johns Close', and went out with brush and paint to instate the lost apostrophe. One of his neighbours remonstrated with him, objecting that post would no longer be delivered. And since it seems the neighbourhood is chock-full of retired military, there could be a protracted campaign underway. What fun.

This story was on the Beeb at about 0720 this morning but took some hours to reach t'interweb, here for example, or in the Mail here, and Telegraph here.

To help explain the sweet irony for readers beyond these barmy shires - the town of Tunbridge Wells is commonly referred to as the home of the archetypal middle-England reactionary, with the phrase 'Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells' widely used as an ironic sign-off. If nothing else, we English have had a lot of practice at self-parody.

Day. Centre.

With ragged sinews Dearie grips the chair arm. Staring at the volunteer holding tea, she's peering at what it was that Don said about landing on the moon, when he got home from school, what was it. She glares awaiting focus, and has all day to do so. Off-centre now she shines down on the rest.

Autobiography

I was born in 1955. In Gloucestershire I watched a field change and a hawk settle on nothing above it. Villages were raised by their children, invisibly harnessed. Sometime later I let go.

Catching up with the neighours

Tramping home from the train station I came round the corner and saw one of my neighbours, propped up with a walking stick, using a foot-pump to re-inflate one of his car tyres.

The stick was the more unexpected sight. Turns out he'd recently had a cartilage operation. I took a few minutes at the foot-pump (must have made some difference) while we casually swapped news.

Could it be that cars offer more for neighbourhood relations when they malfunction than when they run smoothly? I understand it's a slow puncture, so with careful management it could provide numerous valued encounters over the years.

How we communicate with our neighbours #27

I just wanted to ask, are you sure it's not a fox?

Meanwhile, to redress the regrettable imbalance in communication of this kind, I long for an example of complaint about cats. Without prospect of being controlled, they crap all over the gardens of people with children. And yet somehow, cat-owners seem incapable of recognising this as anti-social. Wait, don't go, I haven't started on the bit about their habit of killing birds...

View

Annie lives on the seventh floor and hates with hardening passion the trudge up when the lift fails. Coming home to a flat at height is a committed action, you wouldn't feel like popping out again shortly after, for anything.

To the window now. It's early evening, a thin light is being peeled from the old earth. Bits of city are seething away somewhere completely out of reach. The patch below unpeopled, but it hardly looks as if they'd belong there anyway. Her tea cup rattles on its prim saucer as she slops to a chair, relishing the wobbly silence.

Then I see what it is, the cost and benefit of detachment. Living in a house separates you, living in a tower separates you more, until you begin to like it. Of course Annie works at that with the tenants committee but it was the sound of the door catch closing behind her that refreshed her most.

And looking out I have the most profound sense of unbelonging. Not to this place or person, not to the tangent of this view, or the conversations before with those around who might move or speak or dream as I do.

Before my eyes a bird unhurried sets off to separate the sky.

Observing urban drivers in their natural habitat: no.2

I popped out to the bank, less than half a mile, walked back down one of the side roads, noticed someone sitting in their car reading a newspaper, with the engine running.

A few minutes at home - fielded a phone call, changed shoes, off out again to the train station, chose the same route. There she is still, sat there reading with the engine running. Now I'm at the window. Excuse me, your engine is running. She's closed, no reaction. I'm talking clearly at the glass: I came past ten minutes ago and it was running then. We only have the one planet. Faint response, finger to the head. I heard the motorsound replaced by a reluctant sort of silence behind me as I shuffled on.

Previously:
Observing urban drivers in their natural habitat

Under snow

Some time ago a frontline public library worker said to me, it's like working in mental health.

What she meant was that libraries are an important refuge for people with mental health difficulties, who may have nowhere else to go for much of the day; and a lot of what library staff do now is providing a facility which helps them. It's an under-appreciated role. Libraries are also an important daily checkpoint for many refugees and asylum seekers.

So I applaud the fact that on a day of capital-stopping weather, on which schools were shut without hesitation, at least in my area the libraries were kept open.

Other notes from the day:

Checking up on the NDNs. She offered me table salt for my path.

Apparently the local store opened up as usual, but a small gang gathered to hurl snowballs through the doors at the groceries so they shut for a while.

Some complete plonker driving on packed icy snow, one hand with a mobile phone to his ear, yacking away. As a pedestrian, it's not the conditions, it's prats like that you have to worry about.

Admiring the weak light making the boughs seem green on a hidden path I use, gasping at the clear readiness of landscape.

On my way back from my run I noted a snow-woman, scruffy but still somehow poised and elegant. A minute later cries caused me to turn, to realise she'd been brutishly knocked over by a couple of unthinking lads, embarrassed at their own laughter. Well at least they were outdoors.

Other schoolkids who have not really known snow, rolling down hill together, learning something about innocent collective discovery that will outlast all childhood.

Recalling the winter of '63, slides right across the village pond, birds frozen to wires and frozen milk forcing the caps off bottles that stuck to the step.

Left, shoes

A wet day. In car parks and lay-bys, dogwalkers and allotment users sit in their cars and exchange their muddy boots for shoes.

Usually they take them with, when they leave.

You'd think we do nothin' but cookin' and eatin'

I had to return the NDN's soup jug as she'd brought me round some hot veg broth the other day. So I prepared a pretty decent orange and carrot soup - worrying everso slightly about complicating the reciprocity and the implication of snobbing-up the relationship - and took the jug back full. I followed it up later with a warm wholemeal loaf and came away with a couple of warm scones and a bit of gossip.

Previously: Hot soup

Reciprocal neighbouring

The Very Early Caterpillar

I met this caterpillar the other day (the day after the shortest day of the year) trying to make off with my gate. I didn't say anything in case it took offence.

I don't know much about them but I'd thought every honest law-abiding caterpillar in this neighbourhood was always snugged up in a chrysalis at this time of year. 

Observing urban drivers in their natural habitat

I was walking up the road this afternoon and heard a car start up nearby. The driver pulled out of the drive, rather closely in front of an oncoming car, then after a short distance drew in alongside a post box. I watched a woman get out and post a letter. She was clearly able-bodied. She got back in, turned the car round and headed back the way she came. I thought, well I suppose you might do that if you're off somewhere. So I turned round to see if she was. But she drove straight back into the driveway of the house.

I crossed the road to take this pic of the house, from beside the post box. It's about 75 metres away I reckon.

A bit of generosity

Nice note from Peter Ryley about common decency towards people we happen to encounter:

'A bit of generosity, support, appreciation and a hand up to anyone we can give it to. It might not seem much, but it can make someone's day, or, perhaps, as with our taxi driver, change their lives. It goes under many names, decency will do for now.'

Thanks Ian for the nod.

A small token

They built a gated estate near me, for the posh people. It's such a shame, as they drive up to their electronic gates, the inhabitants have to endure the derisive glances from people who walk and occupy their neighbourhood, it must be awkward.

Someone left this exquisite message by the fence for them.

Lost booty

It's not just pirates have to look after their booty. Note how date, time and location are pretty specific for this sort of public declaration of loss. And we get a wee pic of the baby to admire as well. 'Small reward' it says at the bottom.

Good to know that little things still matter to some people. Sorry about the blurring, it was so cold, I really regret not taking a moment to get a better image.

Hot soup

I ran about fifteen miles on the trails today, sunny but cold. A marvellous light varies the trees. When I got back I put on a few layers and a hat til my temperature settles, then here's the NDN at the door - 'How was your run?' - with a jug of piping hot soup - 'Every vegetable you can think of. Have some now while it's hot'. Thanks m'dear, you all ok? How's S. Not so bad. Mind the step. Stay warm now.

The NDNs are in their seventies. I sit thinking autumnal thoughts about ephemeral connections and uncomplicated acts of kindness.

The discovery

I've just written a story about a blogger who, over the years, introduces occasional fictions into his posts. They accumulate, and gradually begin to dominate. Anticipating that the time will come when his integrity starts to flake, he sets out to duplicate his own identity.

Straightforward enough. Dates, address, passport number, bank account details, dates of employment and major embarassment, phonecalls and journeys made, places frequented, minor achievements, a selection of emails sent. Soon enough there's plenty on which to build some sort of personality, and he begins to plan how to substitute the new identity for the old one.

He starts by turning up at a meeting that he himself would have gone to, using an immaculate copy of the email invitation. The effect seems seamless and he makes the commitment. A week later he even makes a comment from the floor at a debate, claiming to be his former self, and goes comfortably unchallenged.

But the issue of reputation crackles in the background. A couple of over-confident anonymous enquiries to test the new identity result in problematic silences, when contacts who should have been guarantors of good character appear not to know anything about him. How can this be? He blunders on, clumsily detaching reputation from self as he overlays detail on its own image, searching now for something factual to blog about. But the real world won't be seen by fictioned eyes, it does not exist, he has discovered a bankruptcy of social capital.

I know, it needs a bit of work. The final text is here.

A window open to the rain

Heavy rain and quite cold this morning. Drawing back curtains I noticed in the house that backs on, a ground floor window wide open and unfixed. I peered for signs of life, there were none.

On Sunday I'd seen someone in the garden, but they have family and might have gone away on holiday at this time of year. It would be easy to get down the alley and over the fence, so of course I assumed a break-in.

For a moment I sat and examined my motivations. If my fears were confirmed, speed was not necessarily of the essence - it was broad daylight by now. If I took action, was it because I was bothered about crime in the neighbourhood that might reach me? Would I feel guilty if I had done nothing? Would it make a difference to the householder or to the police? Ah, I see how easy it is to do nothing.

I plodded out there in the wet, went round the front and rang the bell. A small window was open above, but no response. I rang again and waited. I drew away in the silence, walked along the street looking for signs of life, then looked back and saw the door just closing. Scurried back, explained, expressed relief, apologised. It was just his son being a little unreliable, after all, and that's a relief. That'll be the lad who managed to sneak his way into my garden and stick his bubblegum on the window the other day, presumably as a dare - I admired his sense of adventure. Said nothing about it.

Returning, I started to wonder if he now thinks I'm nosy for having seen that his window was open. Oh well.

Slowing the pace

I live on the edge of the Greater London area, and came across this handsome pair of beasts bringing in the hay just a couple of miles from home.

I asked the carter if this is a new choice of transport (not having seen them before, and thinking it might be a farmer's response to the recession) but he said they've always used them.

They gave a sense of awesome, dignified power. A moment later a vulgar 4x4 flashed past, which didn't.

Celebrate

Today the NDNs celebrate a golden wedding anniversary. I will potter along to the party later, in ignorance of how many years that amounts to but out of certain celebration for being Next Door Neighbours to them.

Regular readers of this blog will appreciate what I mean (eg) - but even today I had an instance.

I was fumbling with my ladder this morning, huffing puffing and shuffling it about for some painting round the crumbling edges of my house where access was tricky, and out comes the govnor - do I want a hand there?

And him with his back and heart that dodgy, I'd not ask him to help, but he was allus there with practical advice if I needed it, like when I laid the concrete base for the shed that time, and the missus with a cheery word and warm scones.

I invite you to join me for a moment in simply celebrating ordinary neighbourliness.

If you walk you meet people

I've been idly thinking about expanding a chapter about dog-walking that I wrote last year, and the other day was given more material in a chance conversation:

The other dogwalkers, I wouldn't know their names or anything about them but we look out for each other. But I know the names of, I call them the little drunk people, there's a little place I walk past with the dog, where they get their drink cheaply, they sit outside and drink. I've made an effort to get to know them, and I know that if something happened to me, if I didn't come back they know that, they'd look out for me. If you walk you meet people and you find out about them.

Global and local

You'll have to imagine it, I didn't have a chance to record it - just as the bongs of Big Ben were chiming-in the six o'clock news on the radio, an ice-cream van changled its jingle outside... A momentary soundscape was created, the pompous global belltone blending indistinguishably into our summer-easy neighbourhood.

You can't greet your neighbours unless you're out there

On my way back from an early run, around half six, I met three of my neighbours, seperately, all on foot, within the space of about 100 metres. One walking his dog (how's yer leg?), one off to work (lovely day), and one of the lads off to do his paper round (howareyeralright?).

Half an hour later I popped out for some milk and greeted another neighbour in his van off to work, put a couple of emptied wheelie-bins away and got on with some work. My son came back from the dentist and was chatting to the lady next door as he set off for work.

The weather drew me out for another run at lunchtime (yes I know. Yes there are reports to write, I'm aware of that, thank you. But I'm desperate for some fitness here, ok?) and had a quick chat with my NDN as I got back.

There may have been one or two other waves or nods amongst all this, I can't recall. I don't keep records of these interactions, I don't have that kind of temperament, but it all feels reasonably healthy to me.

Neighbours and pets

Oh, I don't get on with my neighbour, said Emily.

I had to bake a cake for her. She came round and asked me to bake a cake as she was having a bath.

Having a bath?

Oh yes, she had visitors coming.

No I don't get on with her. She asked me to walk her dog the next day. I went round and she said she had got a job. I walked her dog for eight years.

Oh, said Peter, a friend of mine was asked to feed his neighbours' cats whilst they were away for a fortnight. When he went in expecting just to have to put out a tray of food once a day, he found in a note that they were diabetic and he had to inject them too.

These true stories from my old friend Martin (thanks mate). Yesterday I picked up a similar story from my neighbours next door, concerning some folk who lived two doors away many years ago. They went away for three weeks and asked Maureen to feed the cat, giving her one tin of cat food – ‘she has one tin a day and she’ll drink your milk.’

What we gain from the public realm

Travelling a fair bit lately. In the last couple of days on trains I have...

...heard someone say they got a cheap ticket from London to Aberdeen, eight hours, 'I just went for the ride'

...heard someone explaining why he keeps smoking rather than endure the stressful cure. 'I like a fag first thing in the morning to clear me lungs'

...half-watched a young woman perform a 20 minute phase of what may have been a marathon meticulous make-up, including fastidious uprooting of eyebrows, the full MOT

…witnessed a clear example of a curious trend, where a couple sit apart from one another in a sparsely populated carriage, and then talk loudly across the compartment. (In terms of irritation level, it compares with insensitive use of the mobile phone, but there is a good tactic to deal with it: you simply go and sit ostentatiously next to or opposite one of them, it makes them realise they are not at home in the lounge)

...heard a tattoo-festooned and behooded young person strike up a conversation with an elderly couple, she saying it’s nice to have a chat and the lad saying 'I met my best friend on a train.'

And I just sit there like a sad blogger. But something I relish about the micro connection with others, without which we would not be able to know ourselves.

A bang at the door

I met a bloke today who told me he'd once put a firework through the door of a house on the corner of my street.

'They got me down the road - my trouser got caught in the chain on my bike, I fell off and they caught me. But they looked after me cos I cut my leg. They took me back and patched me up, and it ended up I went out with their daughter for about three years.'

Yes, since you ask, I had the temerity to ask him why he put a lighted banger in the letter box.

'Cos it was a big metal box' - his arms outstretched - 'it would have gone Boom!!'

This gent, now aged around 55, was clearly still animated at the thought of the sensational percussion he almost orchestrated. It was nowt to do with the people who lived there, about whom he knew nothing.

It's a nice reminder, chiming well with my own childhood recollections, that some behaviour perceived as anti-social is just boyish exuberance. (Well that's my story and I'm sticking to it).

Curtain-twitching and eyes on the street

The other day, on the point of going out, I glanced out the window and saw a delivery van in the street, the driver with a parcel at a neighbour's door.

I knew they would be at work, so I popped out and offered to take the parcel to save all that hassle of signed notes and 'collection between the hours of'. Apart from anything else, this meant that when I took the parcel round that evening, I had the chance to ask after my neighbour's health, knowing he'd been unwell the previous week. All sounds perfectly routine don't it?

Only later did I ponder that whole biz of looking out on one's neighbourhood - referred to as 'curtain-twitching' from one point of view, or 'eyes on the street' from another. I reflect on it here because I'm going through the proofs of a forthcoming text and just came across this bit in a section about privacy:

"Older people can use signs of occupation of the home for mutual support, taking a degree of responsibility for one another. Against this, the phrase ‘curtain-twitching’ is commonly used to denigrate such or similar actions. The easy misuse of the phrase is damaging, since the readiness to have ‘eyes on the street’ is a key component of neighbouring. In this sense, over-emphasising privacy threatens older people, both as subjects of concern (whose difficulties might go unnoticed) and in their legitimate role as co-custodians of the neighbourhood."

Well I'm not that old yet, but I'd like to think that if I ever get to be, social attitudes towards curtain-twitching will have dissolved in favour of more sensible notions of 'eyes on the street'.

And if you want the source for the above quote (and you do, badly, in order to help keep an impoverished consultant fed) watch this space.

Pssst, heard what they're saying about rumour?

Word of mouth doesn't have to take months. I was talking to a couple of residents a while ago about rumour and misinformation in an area of intense regeneration activity, and we touched on the value as well as the problematic nature of rumour. The following anecdote was offered with the conviction of truth of someone reading a log book.

A community activist was busy organising a meeting about an issue they perceived to be important, but too few people promised to come. Tactics adopted included getting on a local bus with a colleague, and using a loud whisper, convincingly foretelling a negative development which would have an unhappy effect on everyone locally. According to the story, this did the trick: the meeting was very well attended.

Pavement chalking epidemic?

I've just been reading some interview and survey material from a range of local residents who attended street parties, as part of a wee project I'm doing with Chris Gittins at Streets Alive. Let me share this extract with you:

How do you get on with younger and/or older people in the street generally?

Fine. Except someone in the street called the police about our 2 young children drawing with chalks on pavement outside our home. We actively want our kids to play in the street and were shocked and depressed by that attitude.

This took place in a city in England. I have no more information and don't know if it took place during a street party or not. But it's an eerie echo of the story of the Brooklyn sidewalk-chalker who received an official fine - indeed it may pre-date that story. What next?

In both instances, I'd have hoped the officials would have taken the time to make a point to the complainant, because it's in the authorities' interest that civil relations prevail, and it can't be hard to do that when there is no serious threat to anyone or to any property.

I can remember when I was a kid, with siblings or friends, riding small bicycles up one end of our street invariably caused one particular older woman to step out her door and tell us to go away. Presumably, she wanted that portion of the planet over which she had some control to remain just so. Is that what drives this uncivil anti-neighbour nastiness? The poverty of generosity under which she existed must have been wretched.

The idea that civil relations with the people who live around us is universally regarded as desirable seems to be simply false.

Community. Centre.

Yorkshire in frost. The light fractures the trees, or is it the other way round. Ellie crunches across the estate part-seeing, sort-of knowing the unfinished scrawling on the walls, the mutterings in the corner shop, a charred tyreless car up against a house, the litter half-swept.

Alone or not, people walk in an isolated way here. Nothing seems rendered. But there's a hope of garden outside these flats, and Merry Christmas being sadly insisted at the window.

She said, before, most days I'd just go to Morrisons, every day, on the bus, with me little boy, getting out of the house, it were like prison, nobody to talk to, and go to Morrison's on t'bus, walk round, wander round aisles, have a cuppa tea and come back, at least you got out.

I was walking dead most of the time, I just couldn't be bothered cooking. We'd come to the community cafe and we'd both eat well for a quid.

I help out here now a lot of the time. There's a big women's social isolation problem in this area. The group that's here now, quite a few have found themselves single parents, they come here and find there's a few more in the same boat, and they support each other.

The global and the local

The other day my neighbour and I were dealing with a tree slumped across the boundary of our properties, and in conversation I took the opportunity to apologise for the fact that the volume on our television had been (I'd discovered belatedly) cranked up to a whopping 40 last Saturday eve. She said she'd not heard anything - 'didn't you hear us stomping and banging the floor...?' No, I said, not a sound.

It's not that we're all hard of hearing, but this was the occasion of a distinguished performance by the England rugby team in a world cup semi-final and I had taken up the time-honoured tradition of shouting at the TV, and turning up the volume in order to drown out my own shouting. Something about the hermetic 'participation' in the experience, though, is not quite satisfactory. Maybe we should have a neighbourhood large-screen for tomorrow's final. (That, my son believes, is what pubs are for).

Doors

Here's a tap at the back door, my neighbour's asking for a witness to count the money and sign, it was her turn to do the cancer charity envelope collection in the street this year. No worries, see you later. An hour later, here she is at the front door. Just did a crumble for you, hold the edges mind, it's hot. Images from Dickens flicker in the steam as I scurry it through to the kitchen.

As it happens I'd just been writing something about doors, including reference to this voice from a study of Bengali elders in London:

‘In Bangladesh we spend time outside and we keep our doors open. We enjoy the fresh air and see our relatives and neighbours and chat together. Here if I go next door, the doors are always closed.’ (Respondent quoted by Katy Gardner, Age, narrative and migration, 2002)

Frog at the door

I popped out for a run in heavy rain this morning, and when I got back there was a frog on the doorstep, as if waiting to be let it in.

Frogs wanting shelter from the rain? Must be climate change. What next, SUV owners deciding to walk?

When the time comes

Mrs T tries round the back, it's locked, calls out, no effect, clops round the front and flutters the knocker.

Crossley's not concentrating on work but the tapping surprises, it takes a second for the sound to make sense. He creaks to the door.

Would he run them up to the club, you know by the roundabout, Mr T with this heart trouble now, it's alright coming back down, but he can't go up so well, with the hill.

Of course, how soon. Saying it slowly, perhaps he'd been dozing. Now if you can. And Crossley's not poured himself a glass yet, slips on his shoes, grasps unglancing for the keys. Mrs T careful now getting in the back. Are you sure you're ok for getting home.

Just here, we can cross. Thanks thanks. And isn't that reassuring, and Mr T with his heart, to feel she can ask any time, in case.

And how good is that, now he knows, with the old feller having this trouble, that she'll call straight away, I won't be sat there fearful that they'd not call. How would it be if something happened, to have been sat there, and not asked.

The washing of cars

Cars aren't much good for neighbourhoods, and paved front gardens are not always good news. But of course car-washing can be one of those excellent occasions for nods of recognition or quick conversations.

So if my son has to have a car, which occasionally has to be washed, it's not a bad idea if one his local friends pops round for a chat meantime. The conversation paused only a couple of times with a hastily shut door.

Street games

Having to prepare a few words to speak tomorrow in memory of my bro, up pops my other bro to talk about street games when we were kids.

Like the slow bike race. All the kids in the street had bikes, we formed a disorderly cavalry and it was the last one across the line who had not put their foot down or fallen off. We played bicycle football too.

And Squashed Tomatoes. We can't recall the rules but it was an elaborate variation on a 'Simon Says' or 'What's the time Mr Wolf?' type game, if I have that right, in which someone calls out instructions and people advance variously towards a line.

One of the calls required you to lie down in the road, then assuming a new (upright) position at a point level with the top of your head. I can't help suspecting that this condition was introduced by, and to favour, the taller members of the group.

But anyway, it tells you something about expectations of traffic in those days. From time to time the cry 'car!' would go up and we scattered. And it's true, we were out there most of the time, summer and winter.

The washing of hair

Here's something told me by a community worker recently. She went with some local women from a low-income neighbourhood on a residential trip, where some of them encountered shampoo for the first time and didn't know what it was, or what to do with it. They always use washing-up liquid.

I've never before considered shampoo in terms of cultural capital, although I've reflected often enough on the role of hairdressers in social capital. It did strike me that there may be many 'heavy-users' of shampoo who don't know what washing up liquid is.

Warm scones

How's this for timing? I was just fixing meself some strong coffee, to persuade my jetlagged brain to work on an overdue report, and struggling to find anything to dunk in it. So there's a voice at the backdoor, it's my next door neighbour, 'Oh Kevin you're back,' with some fresh scones just out of the oven.

Hang it all

A wave from my neighbour next-door, she spotted me at the kitchen window. I potter out. Are you hanging washing today? she asks, shielding her eyes from the sudden spring sun. I'm not. It seems she has the entire wardrobe of her extended family in the washing machine, as we speak. Of course you can use the line, and a good day for it.

Then because I'm such a slow thinker, I have to shuffle out there again because I forgot to offer extra pegs.

In-adequate: things lacking in life

Will Davies has a delightful handwritten fragment, of words and their meanings, here. (The poignant power of that technology - the alphabet, the script - which enables us to communicate beyond the immediate and the local, but keeps us pinioned to the human).

Thoughts about working from home

Heavy snow here this morning, people don't realise how hard it is. It took me ages to scrape the sleep from my eyes, then I skidded at the foot of the stairs but managed to get to my desk without damage. There was a collision in the kitchen and horrendous congestion around the toaster. And you wouldn't believe how long it took me to get the brain started. Then the nightmare of digging a pathway to some papers I needed. One of my ideas was left standing on a platform for three-quarters of an hour without any information. It never used to be like this.

Bake for your neighbour

I'm just sitting at my kitchen table trying to sketch out a briefing paper on neighbourliness and older people, when there's a tap at the door. It's my next-door neighbour with some scones she's just baked, still warm, to go with me tea. Oh thanks - you alright dear? A quick word about the panto and she's gone (a bit like Cinderella, I thought afterwards).

So I sit down again, thinking, how many of us bake and give, these days? Perhaps we need some kind of 'bake-for-your-neighbour' day to remind us of the simple power of sharing food. The multicultural potential could be rewarding.

Food shared creates something else, it can take the spice out of conflict (think of Act 2 of As you like it - 'sit down and feed, and welcome to our table') offering modest moments of connection and little low-pressure spaces of understanding. Perhaps the bridges of cohesion could be baked in our own ovens? (And somebody's going to remind me where I've seen something similar, please?)

Behind you!

And unto this humble blogger, there did befall a great honour. I was trying to grab a quiet hour by meself when the phone rang: could I come help backstage right now as they're one short, stage left?

It has been panto week here. You dismiss it at your peril, particularly since this year's number, Cinderella, was written and directed by my son. You could get a nasty curse from the wicked witch.

So I could hardly ignore his practical plea for the saturday matinee, by mobile some minutes after curtain-up. And indeed I got a buzz being in the wings (more in-the-way than of much use between scenes, I fear).

The production (I witnessed a full rehearsal, two and a bit performances from the hall and one backstage) seems to have been pretty much an unqualified triumph. But who am I to say?

Having experienced its evolution over several months, from the wings as it were, I'm going to have to unleash one more short stuttering monologue about community drama generally, and pantomime specifically. (I last hit this theme 12 months ago.)

Community drama insists on the accommodation of the gormless and the gifted, the shaky and the sure. It welcomes those who are there for the social, those who have talent anyway, those who come cos he or she dragged them along, and those who don't know why they show up. Over several months, parts are re-written to match competence and emerging confidence. It's intergenerational, it tosses together the older assured voices and the uncertain young ones. Dances are worked and re-worked, lines learned and forgotten and changed; scenes blur, separate, find consensus. Technicians come in and fiddle endlessly with lights and mikes, someone sources the costumes and props, someone quietly paints the scenery amid rehearsal mayhem, a man is up the ladder sorting the drapes, there's publicity to do and tickets and programmes. Musicians are found, magic is worked.

You can take your song home, and work on your lines in the privacy of your bathroom, but teamwork permeates everything. This is essentially a huge collective local endeavour. I sometimes think that we should scrap school education and just get people doing community projects like this: for young people at least, it's about as educational (in my definition) as it gets.

And pantomime leaves no space for competitiveness or nasty prejudices. It gives people a familiar framework for behaving quite outside themselves. They do so initially in a social context (twice a week, through the winter, since you ask) and then ultimately publicly (five performances here, each wilder than the previous). Pantomime facilitates modest creativity and a confident rapport with family and friends in the audience - oh yes it does! - and temporarily legitimates marvellously childish behaviour among adults. And we should not overlook the fact that it allows young people, in audience and on stage, to behave childishly too: for some, I suspect, that is a stressfully rare luxury.

And if you're trying to interpret the picture, ok I'll try to keep it simple. Ben plays the part of an ugly sister and happens to be involved in redecorating a room, as you do when you're getting ready to go to a ball. So additional costume is required, and a little slapstick ensues. I hope that's clear.

Little boxes, just the same

Round here I guess it's like a lot of places, sometimes you think why bother to leave your garbage all over the street when we pay to have our dustmen, sorry operatives, do it for us. And they love to leave the emptied boxes in unlikely places.

But it's not their fault we now have four boxes per household - green waste, paper, plastic bottles and cans, and yer authentic garbage. If it helps recycle, it's obviously desirable. Except the lids blow off the paper box and the bottle box is lidless. Stuff gets blown around the place, accumulating in corners, blocking the drain covers and making life just a bit too easy for the rat population.

We had a note through the door some days ago from one neighbour asking if anyone had their green bin. Someone else went without their paper box for a bit, another found their bottle box gone. All excellent stimuli for neighbourly interaction.

Sounds like a job for a retired painter. On behalf of us all, my next door neighbour got all the boxes together and painted the numbers on. I had to have a quiet word about getting number six and number nine the right way up, but otherwise everyone now knows whose is whose. Not that we're afraid of putting stuff in each others' if there's space and the need arises, I'm glad to say.

Panto in the dark

I was just walking home from a meeting this evening and noticed the street lights and house lights weren't on at the edge of the village: a very local power cut. I happened to know the community drama folk were rehearsing the pantomime in the hall, so I popped in to see how they were coping.

There they were, oom-pa-pa oom-pa-pa romping away at a song with all the electric heaters on for light, and a collection of candles blazing. The heaters created challenging conditions, as it's exceptionally mild weather at the moment (I'm at home with the back door open to get some evening air); and the candles might have had the health and safety officer reaching for the rulebook (I suspect he or she had had to be bundled into the panto-horse costume and left in a cupboard for the duration). Well it's just two weeks til curtain up, can't afford to let such concerns disrupt preparations. The panto is serious business round here.

The way our neighbours might be living

There was a conversation at my dinner table the other night about home visits made by (broadly) social services professionals. The winning tale came from an old friend who's an educational psychologist. He tells of a house where there was a parrot flying around indoors, and he watched as it crapped on a plate of uncooked sausages. (Oh says the child's mother, it's poo'd on me dinner). His other prize vignette concerned a motorbike on a bed and a dead goat hanging in the hallway. It sounds like an image coughed up by Tom Waits.

The inconsistency of neighbouring

A friend was telling me today about a conversation with a neighbour, who she reckoned has lived in her street for well over ten years. The question she was asked was something like 'have you seen so-and-so over the road? I haven't seen her for a while.' The lady in question had died some three years previously, unbeknown to the questioner.

For my friend, who grew up in a rural area, a bit of adjustment was necessary, because this couldn't have happened in her village. But she lives now in a northern English city. I'm not surprised and probably most people who think about neighbourliness in contemporary society wouldn't be surprised, which suggests that this sort of disconnection between neighbours is far from exceptional.

My friend works full time all week and is often out of the country, yet she had known about the neighbour's death. The story highlights an inconsistency about neighbouring in urban areas, an unpredictability, which is related to risk and which is accentuated by comparing it with the relative consistency of neighbourhoods in rural areas.

Put simply, when humans move into unfamiliar areas, like any social animal, they do so at risk of being unwelcome, and we prepare for such risk by being ready to put up shutters, to close in on ourselves. In complex urban societies there are a lot of people moving into unfamiliar areas, among unfamiliar others, so there are lots of people ready to put up the shutters on engaging with those around them - especially when the connections we need for sociability can often be sustained remotely and through our work or travel, and when we don't have to collaborate with those around us for basic needs like food and energy.

We have lots of ways of closing others out of our worlds - gates, curtains, personal sound systems, mobile phones, and cars especially - and too few ways of giving connections a chance.

I went on from that conversation to a meeting which included consideration of an outline research proposal on the role of celebration in 'building stronger community ties'. I'm a fraction clearer now about why that's a good idea.

Car alarms, pah

I was woken several times last night by a neighbour's car alarm, set off presumably by the unusually strong winds, or who knows a mischievous cat, I don't much care. Only, 0430 of a sunday morning it was unexpected, esp since the thing was unappeased and went into insistent attention-seeking mode, sounding off every 15 mins for about two hours and a half.

The fact that the owner apparently was unable to hear it from a few metres away does encourage speculation, I mean about the usefulness of the device. I also suspect that if theft is really such a concern, it might be worth thinking about trading down to the sort of car that no-one wants to steal. (I won't say 'that's what I got' because Fate, who I happen to know takes a feed off this blog, would decide it was being made subject to unreasonable temptation).