Ministerial Meandering

Neighbours

 

We have neighbours; I suppose most of us have around here, but our

neighbours are very close. Even the ones across the road could see into

our house if they wanted to. Not that I care that much, as Sheila and I don’t

go in for any indoor gymnastics these days.

 

Then we are surrounded and overlooked on all sides for the other three

sides and back. Close enough to carry on an easy conversation without

having to raise one’s voice in the least.

 

But one neighbour has just been building himself a shed. Well, it’s really

more like a small chalet with a stylish sloping roof that will ensure that any

snow that accumulates on it will dump straight into our yard. That is

because it is illegally close to our fence - SWMBO looked up the

regulations for building close to property lines. It is also of a size that could

probably accommodate a small family of six, plus skiing gear, as the roof is

at least 10 feet tall (I asked my neighbour when he was building it), so your

skis could stand up in it - no trouble.

This small ‘hotel’ by our fence takes the sun off our washline, which does

not do much to endear the builder to Sheila as she like to air her washing in

the sun; and his wife is the one who complains when Gracie barks

occasionally. Does she really think that the erection her husband produced

went up silently?

 

Now I need to put this into context; we have four houses surrounding us,

and three of them have dogs - two have two dogs each, and so do we. So

that’s six dogs in a very small space who like to talk to each other and

swap stories from time to time. I am not clear why it is only Gracie this lady

complains about - and for the sake of ‘World Peace’ I am not allowed to go

around to the person in question and ask her exactly what her problem is.

Or to make her husband a ‘hotel-warming’ gift of a Christmas wrapped

grenade to place on the table of his ‘shed’.

 

Then the owners of the house at the bottom of our tiny patch of grass, we

amusingly call our ‘yard’, is another monstrous ‘shed’, big enough for a

couple of semi-trailers (plus pups) to park in - but that was there when we

came.

 

It was fine until our neighbour began re-roofing it. That was not a quiet

business. Nor is the family of racoons that live in it, for they clamber up on

to the new roof and taunt the heck out of Gracie and Niko, which results in

my dogs trying to climb up our fence to discuss the matter with the racoons

at closer quarters.

This does nothing for our fence; since dogs don’t have clavicles (collar

bones) they cannot climb but insist on trying, so the level of canine

frustration is enough to set the bells sounding in Hope - where there is

none, of course.

 

All of the above leaves in me in a quandary, which, if you have ever seen the cartoons of Gerard Hoffnung or the illustrations of Edward Lear’s            

Nonsense Poems, you will know is a very uncomfortable place to be.

Especially if that quandary is a theological one, engendered by the

injunction that came down from Mount Sinai, and was repeated more than

once by Jesus; we are to ‘love our neighbour as ourselves’.

 

Believe me, I try - but I just wish they weren’t so damn close. A couple of

kilometres between us, and I could almost begin to think the milk of human

kindness might begin to run in my veins - as opposed to the toxic acid that

tends to seethe there too often at present.

 

And as for loving myself - well, God help me!

 

Philip+

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