Him next door...
Simon Williams on why older men make the best neighbours
‘City dwellers would do well to get in the habit of saying hello to one another’
Of all the challenging edicts of Christianity, the instruction to “love our neighbours as ourselves” is the trickiest. Be honest, nobody loves us as much as we do ourselves – it’s just not possible. There are so many unwritten rules to be observed; lending a cup of sugar or signing for a parcel is fine, but we draw the line at dog-sitting a pit bull terrier or jump-starting next door’s car at three in the morning.
So the latest research from a think tank, with the upbeat nom de plume of Bright Blue, falls into the category of blindingly obvious. From it we learn that old, rich white men in Saffron Walden trust their neighbours eight times more than the long-term unemployed do in Haringey. In the leafy suburbs of the shires, your neighbour could well be two miles away – you might just hear Dean Martin crooning from across the valley, but it’s not the same as heavy metal pounding through the paper-thin wall of a terraced house in London’s East End.
The report also reveals that old people make better neighbours. Of course we do. Unlike our grandchildren, we haven’t got headphones on all the time and aren’t blinkered by our hoodies – yet we’re still driven by curiosity. We acquire our information not from the internet but from across the garden fence. My favourite opening sentence is: “Have you heard..?”
We baby-boomers grew up in the aftermath of the war, when good neighbourliness was a key ingredient
to our survival – our parents had shared their terror during the Blitz, the bereavements, the rations and the wild celebrations on V-E Day. But with so many elderly people now living in isolation, and children being drawn into gang culture, we must take stock – it’s not rocket science to understand that we need all the help we can get to bring communities together.
I live in two villages – a real one, Nettlebed, and a fictional one, Ambridge (I’m Justin Elliott in The
Archers). The two have a lot in common – they are both close-knit communities, bound by all manner of things from the harvest festival to the pensioners’ Pilates class. Outwardly, it would seem we all mind our own business but we are, by nature, inquisitive animals, so information about the people next door is a valuable currency.
We like to know if they’re selling their house, having a baby, going to AA, being cuckolded or bankrupted. In the case of The Archers, if none of these apply then you won’t have a storyline and are likely to be sidelined until things get worse – in a soap opera, the one thing you mustn’t be is happy.
You can know too much. I once lived in a flat underneath a couple who were enjoying a very protracted and noisy honeymoon – the length and frequency of their activities upstairs was irritating; an irritation tinged with envy. I got hold of their telephone number and, spoilsport that I am, took to calling them up to interrupt their bacchanalia with market research enquiries or random sales pitches.
The most impressive act of good neighbourliness I’ve ever come across involved a friend of ours who was in need of a kidney transplant. Pinned on the front door one evening, he found a note: “Would you like one of mine? They seem to be in good working order. Best wishes, Mrs X at no 37.”
As the world gets more crowded, we will find ourselves living increasingly cheek-by-jowl, so we need all the help we can get from boffins at think tanks. We need to be encouraged to enjoy the prospect of sharing different cultures, customs, diets, fashions.
City dwellers would do well to follow the example of us village people and get back in the habit of saying “hello” to one another in the street; of smiling at children in checkout queues; of offering to carry the baggage of the overburdened; and of telling tales when we see something suspicious. Mostly, we need to follow our friendlier instincts – and do it without fear. We should remember the camaraderie of letting a bit of carnival spirit into our lives. Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to love