Neighbours
By Eric (Discover English Teacher)
As the knee of lockdown slowly lifts from our collective throats we can start to think about catching up with friends and loved ones again. It’s so exciting to imagine sitting on the spring grass of the local park and chatting animatedly with three select friends about all the Netflix we’ve watched, all the craft projects we’ve undertaken, all the barrels of wine we’ve drunk, all the buckets of nothing we’ve done.
Friends come in many different varieties – from the battle-scarred friends we’ve carried with us our whole lives, to the fresh blush of a new lover. There are about 8 billion people on this earth, so I guess that means there’s something like 7,925,000,000 different kinds of friends (because you shouldn’t count a Trump voter).
There’s one particular, often-overlooked kind of friendship that I’d like to talk about today and that’s our neighbours. Neighbours are people that we live so close to and yet we so easily exclude them from our day-to-day lives. I think this is a sad thing because, although neighbours may not become our closest bosom buddies, they can nevertheless offer support and community – which are even more valuable in this time of Plague than they normally are (remember to keep a safe distance and a mask between you, though).
We choose our friends though shared interests; we have our family through shared blood; our neighbours are only with us through shared space (and humanity). This can lead to meeting really interesting people from whom you can learn whole different ways of approaching, and dealing with, life. Neighbours broaden our horizons. And they often have great stories to tell.
One of my neighbouring households is a couple – he a priest, she a nun; they embraced after their retirement. They both grew-up in the dust covered deserts of Western Australia. One afternoon in his distant youth, while buying groceries for his fellow priests, the man heard a Swing Band rehearsing in the local hall; the music spoke to him and ever since, when not taking care of the needy in his community, he has played in bands and orchestras.
Another household escaped from the concrete slums of Hong Kong in the early 1980s. With little English, the father laboured many years in arduous jobs; now he cares for our communal garden with a magic green thumb, and his daughter plays concert piano that wafts through the afternoon air.
Every neighbour has a story.
People are usually friendly, and if you are far from home and family, neighbours can step in and help.
Neighbours can also be great to practise speaking English with.
I recommend saying ‘hello’ to your neighbours the next time you pass in the corridor, or on the street. Who knows, you might make a new friend.
If you aren’t feeling up to starting a new friendship with someone simply because they live nearby, you can watch the long running Aussie soap opera – ‘Neighbours’. It’s been running since 1985 and is full of the plots and intrigues and neighbourly co-support we all need in these last weeks of lockdown. Not to mention crazy Aussie accents and dated costumes.