How well, if at all, do you know your neighbours?
 

I briefly lived alone for about eight months in the late nineties, in a small cottage in a cul-de-sac off another cul-de-sac, so secluded that often taxis would be unable to find it if I called one. During my time there I never saw or even knew who my neighbours were. Yet back here where I grew up and now live, I've known my neighbours for years and years. When one of them moved out I made it my business to meet the new ones and introduce myself.

It put me in mind that many people may live in places and not know, or meet, their neighbours. In my parents' time you always knew who was living next door to you and the community was very close-knit. But now I wonder?

So, how well do you know your neighbours? Are people living in houses more or less likely to be acquainted with those living next door than those living in high-rise apartments? What about isolated areas? The suburbs? Does it vary from city to city, area to area, country to country?

If your neighbour was sick or even dead, would you know? Do you even know who they are? Or are you on good, familiar terms with them? Be interested what people have to say.

I live in a hostel and I know most my flat mates, some better than others but they can be intrusive at times. I really like privacy. The technical neighbours in houses next to us, one has drank with us and brought us fresh vegetables and the other has parties on Wednesday nights and other odd times.

Yeah I can imagine there is not a whole lot of privacy sometimes! Do you like most of the people who live in the building though?

I know my neighbours and most people in my corner of the neighbourhood. That's not to say I like them all or on good terms with all of them... Most are nice, but there are a couple of bad apples.

I live in a small granny-unit type house behind a larger house. The woman who lives in the front house is a chain smoker named Sonia who sits outside all day reading trashy genre fiction and she has two really ****ty offspring. Robert, her oldest, is just the dullest of the dull and sunbathes in our driveway shirtless all summer while reading Westerns. I took a creative writing class with him once and he is a terrible writer with no personality. Her daughter, Suzie, is a whiny little cunt who is always crying and screaming when she doesn't get her way. "I HATE YOU MOM YOU MAKE MY LIFE TERRIBLE" and the like. Extremely unfriendly, but I have befriended her boyfriend, who visits quite often. He helped me fix my bike once.

To my left is a duplex. In one part of the duplex resides a very young, hip couple who are always throwing craft parties and borrowing things for photo shoots. They're very friendly and warm and play good jazz. The other half of the house is owned by an older couple whose appliances are always breaking. I hear them every weekend in their backyard bickering - the husband trying to repair whatever isn't working and the wife standing over him offering advice to his annoyance.

I've never seen the people who live in the house behind me, but from my kitchen window I can see into their backyard. They have a trampoline and every Sunday a bunch of kids play on it while adults barbecue and chat, so I assume the owners of the house are older and Sundays are their weekly family visits.

To my right is the most entertaining. The woman who owns the house refers to herself as the White Witch and so do I because I still don't know her real name. A couple of years ago some dude showed up and started living in a tool shed in her backyard and the first time we saw him he was outside in the dark while it was raining digging holes we were pretty sure were for dead bodies. This man is now referred to as Shed Ted. Shed Ted does not like us. Shed Ted throws beer bottles at our house and put speakers on his shed roof and aimed them directly at our living room window through which he plays very strange white supremacy music at all hours of the night. Shed Ted once took a hose and sprayed it at our window for five solid minutes for no apparent reason. He has nicknames for my roommate and I and once said he was going to eat the ******* of our cat. I'm pretty sure Shed Ted and the White Witch are banging, which is one of grossest things I could ever imagine.

I live in a very quiet neighborhood. It's really boring and lame as fack.

For all I know, my neighbors are cannibalistic jelly-blobs from Neptune

Shed Ted sounds like a ****.

My neighbour to my left is not called Shed Ted, but is called Fred. Fred has a greenhouse and a shed.

Shed Fred lives on his own, in what used to be his mothers house. He used to live there with his mother, Brenda, until she was committed to a mental institution, spent a very brief time there, then was discharged to a nursing home once it was decided she had no need to be there, where she lived for a matter of days before she died. Shed Fred masterminded the whole thing. He used to make phoney calls to the police about his mother quite frequently, inventing stories about her, so that eventually once he had built up a profile, sought the advice and manipulated his way into gaining the backing of a doctor, and decided to pull the trigger - the doctor, the police and social services were all conned into believing she deserved to be taken away. She was taken away by several social workers, around six or so police officers, and a few doctors, who all descended on her home at once to "escort" an elderly, lovely old lady away, ultimately to her death, while Shed Fred hid in his brother-in-laws car which was parked at the top of the street, where he watched the whole thing happen and waited until everyone had left to return to the property, which is now his.

Shed Fred is also a ****.

I live on a main road. This is an interesting topic for me. For 2 years we loves our neighbours. Whenever we saw eachother we'd always talk and buy eachother Christmas presents. Then the old man who lives alone started getting really mean and horrible to us. One day we were pulling out of the drive, he stood in front of the car and started swearing at us for 20 odd minutes. Stupid man. Then the other neighbours are very posh and stuck up and started going dirty guts with us. They have garden partys all the time so whenever they do we always make sure we're all outside doing something. I like to jump on my trampoline and wave over, it's the only time I ever go on it. Then whenever they do their snobby laugh we'll all imitate them. Such fun! All the other neighbours we've ever had have been our friends, one of my old neighbours are my godparents! Some people are just weird.

You win the prize for having the most interesting neighbours so far! :laughing:

Please explain. :confused: ;)

I live in a cove. I know the people on each side of me somewhat, and the only other person I know is a man who lives two houses down from me. He came over when I moved in and told me him and his wife "like to keep it quiet", and yet he has all the parties. Just recently he had all the kids from his party out in the cove playing, and a woman with a wine glass and the wine bottle waving down my car yelling "paaartay!" I guess she was the babysitter.

I don't really know any of our neighbors apart from some facts:

neighbors in unit 10 smoke a lot of weed and don't know the meaning of volume control on their tv; some hussy who goes up there quite a lot has a bad habit of parking in my spot.

neighbor in unit 8 sounds like a dying whale when she has sex. according to unit 7 (two elderly people), unit 8 seems to be getting fatter and fatter without explanation.

there's also some person (possibly unit 6) who smokes a lot of Marlboro Light 100s (I'd know the smell from anywhere - my gram used to smoke them) and the stench seeps in through the kitchen.

I know most of the people on the block, at least to say hi to. The couple on one side of me are pretty nice. We watch their place when they're out of town and they watch ours. The elderly lady on the other side is very nice too, but her house is like a fucking hostel. There are constantly different people coming and going (and occasionally fighting in the street) and they generate an unbelievable amount of trash, which is kind of weird. The woman across the street is a pain in the ass who thinks she owns the block, has screaming breakdowns in the middle of the street, bums money off people constantly and hangs out on her stoop smoking weed and having loud conversations at all hours of the night.

my neighbours have a really dreadful son, i avoid them at all costs.
seriously who the **** purposefully takes a muffler off of a honda

I know my neighbors like I know my alphabet they contain 26 different personalities.

For a moment there I thought you said you live in a cave! :laughing:
http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keat...er-in-cave.jpg

Oops, sorry! It's just one of them saying folk round where I live use. It just means going very arsey and bitchy for no reason. :D

Well, I do live in Tennessee :p

Yours sounds fun. It reminds me of a Spike Lee film from the 90s or Sesame Street

I have no neighbors, but ones who have a cottage they frequently visit. But they are over fifty and they have no children so they are kinda ok. Opposite to us is another cottage (or rather a villa) which is owned by some rich folks but we never see them. Other neighbors live over 200 meters away from us, so I think they don't qualify as neighbors at all?

Well I live in a 3 bedroom condo up on the second floor... There is an empty one next to me on both sides, because the elderly lady on the right is seasonal, and the people on the left are moving... I think the one down the end is an orphanage because there are always strange chilren running in and out and a social worker comes from time to time... Then there are the Russians below me, and some strange **** goes on down there man....there is terrible Russian techno that plays all the time..so it's like living above a disco... I wish I could say it was good because I might not be so sore about it 1 am.. And I don't really want to confront a drunken Russian in his bikini breifs at 1 am so I have big head phones....REALLY BIG HEADPHONES.... But I guess you could say we all get along fairly well... Except for the day I was washing my porch and Boris got an accidental shower... I didn't apologize promptly either because I couldn't breath I was laughing to hard...

There's the river at my passenger side, then when I look out the other window of the van I see a highway. Really no neighbors except for this old scruffy dude named Pete that fishes off the shore.

wait whuuttt you live in a van? Not there there is anything wrong with that...I am just wondering...

I suppose he's living in a van that's filled with water

it's a water bed on wheels...YES!

Good grief people.

I don't talk to my neighbors much in my building. I exchange pleasantries but that is about it. I have never seen the person that lives on the second floor under me. For a long time the cat lady on the first floor used to annoy me. I would go out to take out the trash at like 4am and leave the door slightly ajar. She would come out of her apartment and lock the door. I am so glad that I always brought my keys with me just to take out the trash or I would be locked out. She was pretty damn spiteful to do that every trash day. She has like five cats and feeds the stray ones on the block. She is super loud every morning talking to the cats and yelling at them to get out of the road. She also gets into fights with this other loud lady that lives a few blocks down. The other lady usually sits out front of her place in a chair talking to people as they pass. There is also a group of older guys on my block that are always just chilling outside talking smack to each other. In the summer, they break out a table to play dominos on. There is heavy traffic on my block but I won't elaborate why.

Crazy Cat Lady?

http://conservatives4palin.com/wp-co...azyCatLady.gif

Pretty much but she is younger like in her 50s and she is so punk rock. She has numerous piercings. I like her now. Lawl. I can hear her loud mouth right now as I am typing this.

In Russia, porch washes you! :laughing:

How well do any of us really know our neighbors? Including those we think we know fairly well? As a case in point, a few years ago a man and his wife, both in their 50's with no kids, moved into a house at the end of the street I live on. They seemed reasonably friendly, would say hello, make small talk but kept to themselves mostly. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary, they just seemed to be a busy, working couple in a neighborhood with a lot of similar couples.
About a year or so after they moved into the neighborhood, I was reading my morning paper and saw an article about an F.B.I. raid on a home in my town, leading to the arrest of a high-ranking member of an organized criminal gang. Needless to say, my interest was piqued and as I continued reading, I realized that the home the F.B.I. raided, was the home of my new neighbor and he was the one they arrested!
Apparently, he was the head of the illegal gambling operations for the gang and wound up being charged with money laundering and tax evasion (among other charges.)
Neither he nor his wife were ever seen in the neighborhood again.
The house they lived in remained empty for several months after the raid and eventually was put up for sale and sold to a family with children.

Always suspect the ones who keep to themselves.

I'd better keep an eye on myself, then! :laughing:

My neighbors believe that about me actually because I don't chill outside like porch monkies during the summer.

I guess mine are okay.

I came home this afternoon and the neighbors kid had their four wheeler stuck in my flower bed.

Happy holidays.

Oh, how nice. Let me guess, mom and dad were nowhere in sight?

I have to say if was to see my neighbours getting brutally murdered i'd wait a few hours before calling the cops

Same. I'd probably let the body rot until I couldn't take the stench anymore.

lol. i'm making the most of the peace and quiet at the moment........all the neighbours are away