UNKNOWN QUANTITIES

I still haven’t met the new neighbours yet. Despite the fact that they’ve been living there for nearly a year now, our paths still haven’t actually properly crossed. Faces have been seen, and awkward smiles exchanged as we variously dash about, of course, but we haven’t been formally introduced, or, perhaps more reasonably formally introduced ourselves to one another, and we remain unknown quantities to each other. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with that of course, unless you really want to read things into it like it being symptomatic of the general crumbling of society because “people just don’t talk to their neighbours any more”. It’s much less sinister than that. We just have different lifestyles, work at different times and generally haven’t been poking our noses out of our front door and into each other’s business much over the year since they moved in, that’s all.

Granted this lack of knowledge can lead to strange moments of paranoia and a slight feeling of fear of the unknown. When strange letters turn up from the land registry aiming to clarify the boundaries of your property, you can find yourself wondering why they have and whether some kind of dispute is in the offing, even though it’s much more likely that some “I”s needed dotting and “T”s crossing due to some administrative shenanigans that came up during the sale.

We are very aware of the various cats though, which seem sweet enough, although, because of the great yawning knowledge gap when it comes to basic information, the fact that the cats always seem to be slightly different to the ones we saw the previous day so we’re never quite certain whether they actually live there permanently, are replacements for other ones that came to an unfortunate end or are the end result some kind of complex breeding or gifting process that we can only begin to guess at. All I know is that they are either bonsai cats or there is some kind of elixir of youth thing going on with their Whiskas, as the young kittens never seem to age.

This does make me imagine, in my more unusual moments, that I’m actually living next door to some kind of super villain or scientific genius, one who has discovered the secret of eternal youth and now plans to conquer the world, Mwahahahahahahahah!!!! This, I suspect, is not really what’s going on at all, although it is truly bizarre what the brain chooses to make of the various bangs, bumps and boings that you get to hear through the typical adjoining wall. I have occasional visions of a huge wrecking ball relentlessly bashing into it, with a crazed Quasimodo swinging dementedly from the chain, but then I’m just as sure that our own, coughs, sneezes and the many colourful epithets that I scream merrily at the computer screen create an equally bizarre picture of life here at Lesser Blogfordshire H.Q. that probably doesn’t bear thinking about. After all, I can clearly remember my “downstairs neighbour” at college once asking me about the noise that sounded like a rolling marble that constantly seemed to be coming from the ceiling above her, and I could never really explain it. I think she believed that I was holding some kind of international marbles competition in the confines of my own little room, although I suspect that what was really going on was that I was quite simply losing my marbles as they escaped through one of their many secret tunnels under cover of darkness.

However, when you open the front door and a little piece of cardboard from some courier or other flutters to the ground telling you that they tried to deliver your parcel and you weren’t in, even though you were, and informs you that it has been left with the great unknown next door, and you realise that some kind of official first contact is suddenly imminent, your mind can go into all kinds of loops. What if they turn out to be devious people who deny all knowledge of my much anticipated parcel? What if they open the door and I wave my sorry bit of cardboard at them and they deny all knowledge? “Don’t know what you’re talking about, mate!” What do I do then? Obviously the courier wouldn’t know that our timelines never seem to cross, or that there might be some long standing feud between us, or that they might be about to go off on some three month  expedition with my silly little delivery still parked in the corner of their living room.

Then the paranoia starts to grow as I knock upon their door a few times and there is no reply and the house looks like it’s been empty for a while and also as if it might remain so. The blinds are down and nobody’s home. How can this be? I mean, the courier managed to find them at home, so why can’t I?

How to approach it, anyway…? My mind creates little scenarios “I think you may have a parcel of mine…”

No.

Too pompous.

Perhaps something lighter…? All of this planning remains utterly irrelevant because over the course of the next 24 hours, they never seem to be home. At least not when I am at any rate, and then I realise that I’ve got to go out that evening, probably at just the time they are at home. How many times will they bother tapping on my door before they just give up and assume nobody actually wants my parcel?

It is, after all, a bit of an intimidating responsibility anyway, saying you’ll take charge of a delivery for someone. What if they say you never gave it to them? What if it gets broken? Or stolen? What is the responsibility you take on board when Mr Parcel Postie catches your eye and says “Can you see that those at number 12 get this, please…?” What if those lovely folk at number 12 are away? I could be sadly trudging over there for weeks…

Anyway, I stuck my nose out of the door mid-afternoon, just to take a peek at the curtains next door to see if there was any sign of life, just as he got home from work. With a cheery hello he told me he had a parcel of mine. I, rather bizarrely, produce the bit of cardboard with a flourish and say “That’ll explain this then!” and the mysterious exchange of goods is made and, thanks duly given, we go our separate ways again.

And I still forgot to introduce myself…