A glance at recent headlines suggests neighbourliness isn’t exactly in fashion: five-year “war” over “untrimmed” hedge; wellness guru accused of blocking neighbours’ access; shared hedge court “battle”; “fine for noisy rooster leaves neighbours cock-a-hoop”. In March, the Times reported a surge in litigation over boundary disputes; in June, the housing ombudsman told the BBC that antisocial behaviour complaints had doubled in the past five years.
But I don’t believe we’re all living in a simmering neighbour grievance stew, threatening to boil over any second. Almost all of us live in intimate proximity on this small island and vanishingly few cohabitations end in complaints and court. We ranked fourth of 24 countries in trusting our neighbours in the World Values Survey and while the sense of belonging to our neighbourhoods has declined slightly since Covid-19, it is steady at about 60%. Most people try to be decent, tolerating barbecue smoke, straggly privet or escaped tortoises laying waste to their gardens.
My neighbours go much further than that: this summer they have given us mountains of cherries, tomatoes and plants, lent us a trailer and done some chicken sitting. I don’t offer much in comparison, but I have fed a cat, taken out bins, offered lettuces and witnessed signatures – the basics of neighbourliness.
Or should that be “neighbouring”? Writing in the Financial Times, the author Tiffany Watt Smith suggests the word is a better fit for how we live in this unchosen, happenstance proximity: “A more neutral verb (much like ‘parenting’) that emphasises what we do, rather than who we are.”
The idea of “neighbouring” as an action, not an identity, resonates, and how you neighbour is a product of circumstance (plus, of course, personalities). My neighbouring history is mixed: there was a family of uptight brass players so annoyed by my laissez-faire lawn maintenance that they sent one of their chinos-wearing sons round to mow; in another street, a nocturnal saxophonist improvised experimental accompaniments to Johnny Hallyday tracks after midnight, but also threatened to bury my husband in the garden when he got the lawnmower out.
In a Paris apartment with a newborn, a toddler and terrible acoustics, we were the meat in a multi-generational complaint sandwich: five minutes of crying (the baby’s, mine was equally heartfelt but quieter) roused both the twentysomething below, who threatened to report us to the “authorities”, and the irascible retiree above, thumping with his cane.
But other neighbours threaded connection and kindness through the long or short times we shared space. Especially Maria, our neighbour in our first flat. How else would I ever have met Maria? I’m so glad I did.
Italian, widowed, mid-70s, Maria lived downstairs with her pampered cat, Bambi, a fur ball fed solely on organic chicken mini fillets and “special” Harrods milk. Absurdly energetic, she still worked in Soho’s trattorias, stumping home at midnight with the takings zipped inside her boot. Her speech patterns and anecdotes were richly strange, featuring murder (decapitation recurred alarmingly), cameos from the likes of George Best and L Ron Hubbard and decades-long grudges. Her expressions – “pieces and pieces” for “this and that” and “Fatty Bongo” (her nickname for Bambi, and others) – instantly entered my personal lexicon.
Maria “neighboured” hard: she fed us, gave us gifts (unwanted, but that was immaterial) and took us out, usually to Italian restaurants where she was feared and respected equally. Once, memorably, she took us to a louche Mayfair casino where we discovered she was a regular. Later, she marched me down Edgware Road, pregnant, to buy frilly OTT baby clothes for our firstborn. I could only offer “pieces and pieces” in return: sourcing Bambi’s expensive rider, errands, an appreciative ear for her stories.
Eight years later we left, with a final parting gift of a gigantic crystal basket. I’m sad that we didn’t stay in touch (my stepmother did for a while, so I know Maria adored the chaps who replaced us – they even shared a dog). That’s “neighbouring”, I suppose: we enter each other’s lives then leave, hopefully a little richer, not in crystal and infant sailor suits but in perspective; openness to connection, curiosity. Of course, your next neighbour could be a pass-agg note leaver, a pyromaniac or 3am dubstep aficionado. But what if they aren’t?
• Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
