Here Comes The Neighbourhood

We’ve been here four months today, wow, a third of a year gone already. Four months since Rob, Zita, Jen, Daniel and Darren were silly enough to volunteer to help us shift, thanks again guys.

In this time we’ve come a long way but one area we hadn’t really progressed in was meeting neighbours. A nod here, a wave there but not much beyond that. This all changed on Saturday when Tweety and Sylvester flew in to our back yard. It was an incredibly windy day, gusts over 100k apparently. I was working when I heard Rae say “I tawt I saw a puddy tat.” and sure enough, there they were, on the side of a kids tent that had blown in to our back yard.

We battlted it inside and pondered what to do. When the rain stopped Rae took the kids and went for a walk to ask the houses around us if they were missing a tent. She got to meet several of our neighbours, with perhaps the most interesting being two doors up. They had just moved in and commented that when looking at the street they were particularly stuck by our house; no, in a good way. Instant bonus points to them.

Conversation continued and eventually arrived at the neighbours who have just moved out after two months. It ends up the guy next door has sold his house and after barely two months his tenants have been given the heave-ho. This is the guy who refused to acknowledge our fencing notice and ignored two letters requesting his presence at mediation to try and get a fence built. Yes, we are still missing one side fence because this guy wanted to avoid paying while he tried to sell his place for an unrealistic amount. He refused to answer phone calls and was a general pig about the issue.

The good news is that we know who has bought the house. It’s the brother of the nice people two doors up, and he is going to ask that a fence be constructed before settlement. What goes around comes around my friends.

Later that afternoon we had a knock on the front door, it was our neighbours on the other side, those of the bubbling spa fame Ren. It ends up the tent belongs to them. We did the neighbourly thing and invited them in to collect it. Every neighbour secretly wants to know what the inside of the house next door looks like and here was their chance. I wonder if they did what we would have done on the way home. “Oh, I didn’t like the colour scheme. Did you notice the lounge? So that’s what that room is.”. If it was us we’d probably still be going over what we saw.

So now we know who lives in a few of the houses around, that the people next door are actually really nice and that we will soon have new neighbours and a fence. All thanks to a flying Tweety and Sylvester tent and some chatting by my wife.