I like my neighbours.
I’ve been drawn to the 5pm watering ritual, a 20-minute excuse to empty the rainwater tank while trading banter over the pickets.
I had some geraniums next to Jack’s side of the fence, but nobody told me annuals only lasted a year. I thought I’d killed them off, berated my own gardening skills, and let the mower wield its magic over the flower bed.
I’m now left watering a very green corner of grass while a shirtless Jack tells me about the latest problems with his car restoration, and complains about the people down the street who he insists will set the entire street alight during bushfire season.
Jack’s an unassuming type. To say he has a muffin top would be kind. His stomach comes within a couple of inches of the top of his knee caps. It hides the front of the Ruggers shorts he’s had since 1987 when gentlemen liked the idea of having pockets to hold their car keys.
I’m no Keanu Reeves either, might I add. Passers by must have a joyous conversation as they pass two elderly types, one with back hair coarse enough to sand the front deck, and the other with a Jacky Howe and a mono-brow on steroids.
I digress. Jack makes a valid point. Wanda’s not a fan of Jack, but I’ve always considered myself lucky that we didn’t draw the morons down the street who failed to tick the right multiple choice boxes in their IQ test.
I’m not sure what they do all day. They spend an awful lot of time turning an engine over in their driveway without actually taking the car for a test drive.
Jack’s a restoration guy too, but he doesn’t have the same need to play the soundtrack every three minutes.
The point is that they’ve allowed their yard to grow over so badly that their gutters are overflowing with dead leaves. I’ve never seen their children play in the yard, but they must have at some point because there are toys strewn between the dog parcels, the clothes line and the front letterbox.
I might be sounding all judgemental, stereotyping the good folk who make up my cultural precinct. Let’s just say I’m suspicious they might have alternative revenue streams growing under an elaborate hydroponics scheme in their roof.
With the number of helicopters flying above our house, surely one of them has heat sensing technology.
However it is that they make enough money to pay for the adjustments to their mechanical toys, it doesn’t consist of either a lawnmower or a rake because there are smells coming from that yard that remind me of the time I explored a back street in Delhi and followed a stagnant canal for perhaps the longest hundred yards I’ve ever walked.
Which takes me back to Jack’s point about the leaves in the gutter being fuel for a neighbourly bonfire.
He’s a diplomatic type. Far more polite than my own captious self.
What Jack means to say is that there are a few in our street who don’t consider others, lacking empathy, inconsiderate even.
One house in a hundred houses where the residents prefer to spend time keeping others awake than they do keeping the community safe; who don’t clean up after the dog they committed to six months ago; who feel Coke bottles in the backyard among children’s decaying toys is an acceptable level of cleanliness.
Let’s be blunt. Jack’s an eyesore. But he’s an eyesore who’ll lend his wheelbarrow to anyone who asks. He’d also load his trailer with someone else’s trash and take it to the dump just to make sure his street remained in contention for the next tidy towns award.
The street’s full of Jacks, and I for one am grateful. It’s a tragedy that some neighbourhoods are left deploring the actions of a buffoon who has the community spirit of the single blowfly that always seems to make its way past the screen door.
Hey, Wanda. You seen the fly swatter?
