Everybody needs good neighbours

IAM lucky enough to have had some wonderful neighbours during my lifetime who have become so much more. I’m reminded of this because currently our great friend and neighbour Jerry Dunn, at 84 years of age, is helping his cycle partner, my husband, to lay a block wall!

Jerry has been incredible over years. We have shared Christmases, birthdays, weddings, deaths of parents and pets. Jerry has been on hand to extricate a squealing weasel from under my bed, fix a fountain when a friend cut through the mains water pipe and take me to work when snow proved too much for our car.

Before Jerry there were Bill and Diana in the village not far from where we are today. Although a fair bit older than us, life with them was one long party. Connecting garden gates led to riotous evenings on our small lawn on which we held, we thought, elegant dinners all dressed up and complete with candelabras! There were midnight cycle rides round the village and frequent ‘lock ins’ in the local restaurant.

In Dorset, where my husband and I bought our first home together, a detached thatched cottage, there was Marilyn and Frederick. Marilyn, who was from Torquay originally, had been a nurse forced to retire having sustained a back injury, so there was a natural bond almost immediately. I was working at Pebble Mill at the time and only home at weekends so it started out as occasional drinks ‘n nibbles in our respective back gardens and progressed to coffee on a daily basis through the summer months when I was at home.

One weekend while we were away we were burgled and Marilyn, who had a key, couldn’t bear to let me see the mess they’d made so went in and cleared it all up. We kept in touch for many years when we left Dorset; in fact on one occasion I stayed with them.

Then there was Rene who became a much loved member of the family. On the day I moved into the first home I ever bought, a little cottage at Plympton St Maurice, or Plympton San Moritz as I used to call it, there was Rene hanging up the net curtains she’d just washed! After that she became a permanent fixture in our lives for many years. Rene lived next-doorbut-one in a rented flat with her two dogs for company and kept an eye on the elderly landlady who lived downstairs.

In fact, although a pensioner herself, Rene kept an eye on everyone. Not only did she insist on ‘doing’ for me, but if I went out on a Sunday afternoon with friends would let herself in with a plate of homemade cakes for when we returned. Many are the night we watched a scary film together with a bottle or two of wine. Many are the fetes and functions she accompanied me to, including a hysterical Gay Pride weekend in Brighton. She also proved her metal as a ‘fry up’ queen when I had a breakfast party for my 30th birthday.

Rene taught me how to produce the crispiest roast potatoes and one Christmas, when my oven failed halfway through cooking dinner, calmed the hysterical woman I’d become, transferring all my food to hers. When we moved Rene visited for holidays and we kept in touch until she died a few years ago.

All our neighbours have enriched our lives no end. People we could laugh and cry with.