Monday 27 May 2013

Neighbours, Everybody Needs Good Neighbours....

Another song to start today's blog entry.... Maybe that should be my theme for the next year's series of entries, I've been looking for something...

Of course, I could also have used 'History Repeating' by the great Dame that is Shirley Bassey but that might have been too obvious, or not obvious enough.... 

As you know, we moved house in September of last year, out of our beautiful Georgian townhouse (beautiful but not very kid friendly... Apart from the ghosts who were far too kid friendly... Oooo, there's another story there, remind me to tell you later)  into a far more family friendly property which overlooks a river, is near to the park and the school but which has a comparatively small garden, hence football is banned and all budding young soccer players have to make the two minute walk to the park... Of course most children don't want to walk anywhere no matter how close so balls have already gone awry after being kicked in the garden.

What is strange though is that our new neighbours are carbon copies of our old ones. To our left we have an elderly couple who live for their garden, exactly the same as our previous neighbours and, like the previous couple, they are lovely and indulge the children. On the other side we have a younger couple with no kids who are barely at home, I assume they both work late, and consequently their garden is left to its own devices. I think we are somewhere in the middle of the two, literally. I don't mind gardening but it doesn't rule my life.

Yesterday it was a lovely sunny day and the children were in the garden while Papa and their cousin who is staying with us, fired up the barbecue. Since we have had the slightest hint if summer the barbecue has been in constant use, Papa even suggested using it to bake a cake, I don't think that will taste too good but Papa wants to find out if charcoal is cheaper than electricity... 

As in our previous home TJ's version of weeding was to pull any offending weeds up and throw them over the fence, onto the elderly side not the young side who probably wouldn't even notice. I told him off and the two children and I sat down to make paper aeroplanes. Great fun. I was called upstairs and went to see what Papa needed. In the time it took me to get up the stairs and onto the balcony all of the paper aeroplanes had been lost and were to be seen poking out of next doors miniature trees and shrubs where my two had been lobbing them over the fence. Another telling off, then we went out for a walk to get rid of some energy and also to prevent TJ from putting his head into the barbecue to see 'if there was fire yet!'

On our return the kids rushed in from the garden to show me the most amazing aeroplane made out of paper, it really was a work of origami. "Wow," I said, "The neighbours must be back in and you have to say sorry and thank you now." "Why do I have to say thank you?" Asked TJ. "For the paper plane," I told him. He looked at me disparagingly and said, "But the plane came from the tooth fairy, I know because I saw him!" (Our tooth fairy is called Frank and TJ is expecting him any day now, hence we have had many 'sightings').... So I duly went over to thank the neighbours who were very nice about everything and asked if the children liked the plane they had made for them.

We had our barbecue and the young couple from next door had theirs. They  had friends over and were all sitting and chatting on their balcony, not offensive at all... Well, not to us.... TJ on the other hand finished his food and then said, very loudly, "Well, I would have enjoyed that if the people next door weren't quite so noisy!" Cue a sudden silence from everyone next door and much  hushing and 'TJ, you can't say that." from me....

Our neighbours went in soon after that and haven't spoken to us since.... They shall probably start throwing their weeds into our garden next....

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