Monthly Archives: October 2009

I have new neighbours. This has left me twitchy and uneasy. I don’t like change, you see. My old neighbours were excellent neighbours. They kept themselves to themselves, I kept myself to myself. They were quiet and mannerly, two of my favourite things in other people.

From time to time we would have the odd chat about nothing much, neighbourly but not at all intrusive. At Christmas we would trade bottles of wine but there was never any suggestion that we should enter each other’s homes to drink them. I’d drink the bottle they gave me and they’d drink the bottle I gave them. It was the perfect neighbourly relationship.

However, they have now moved, down the country if you can believe that, and new people have arrived. Now, I think you all know I’m an open-minded kind of man, so I can overlook the fact that they’ve got a non-Dublin registered car. Maybe they bought it down there for a bargain price, it’s too early to judge them on that.

What I can judge them on though is the fact that they might have two cars and last night they parked their other car in a most haphazard, unthinking fashion so I could not park outside my house.

This does not bode well. Having scant regard for the long-established folk of a neighbourhood is not a good sign.

There is a shift in the universe and I do not like it. I shall, of course, let them know that the space in front of my house is not to be taken up with their other car, if indeed it is their other car and not just a friend staying over last night or something, and I shall expect full and unquestioning compliance with such a request.

Otherwise … well … it won’t be good. It won’t be good at all.