Hanging in there

I have a dream that one day I will get right back down to the business of writing on a single theme every day. In the meantime, I have been adding "project manager" to my collection of titles. The most recently completed project is a new fence and gate surrounding our back garden. There is also a new patio awaiting a new shed/electric wheelchair garage. 

Eventually I will have to leave a nice message on the "Trusted Tradesperson" site, suppressing my gloom over the state of the raised bed (now an unhappy mass of earth, rubble and distressed blackcurrant bush)  and dismay that the workmen put the large half-barrel of herb garden in the noxious shade. However, I solved the latter problem by appealing to one male neighbour and then another, and between the two of them, they got the rosemary & co. back into the sun. 

This brought our downstairs neighbour outside, and thus there was an impromptu meeting of the building association, as it were, the retired housekeeper and retired ship's cook exchanging enthusiasms over our new gate and the barber shrugging off admiration for his superhuman strength to go back to his pigeons. This little gang is a large part of the reason why Benedict Ambrose and I do not pack it in, get back on the mortgage treadmill, and buy a ground floor flat somewhere. You can't buy good neighbours.

This incidentally reminds me of an old sorrow of my mother's, back when she was in her twenties and thirties. In short, her mother often chatted with her next door neighbour over the fence (was there even a fence?), and so she envisioned talking to her own neighbours over her own fence. Alas, for ten years at least, the neighbours weren't available to speak to. On one side was a housebound very elderly woman and her housekeeper, and on the other a very cranky old woman who didn't like children, until a couple with two jobs but no children moved in and hemmed themselves behind high (to me) wooden slats. 

I often think of this when I put the laundry out when one or another of my neighbours is hanging theirs up.  We generally exchange comfortable remarks about the weather, and how B.A. is, and whether or not it is time again to cut the grass. Mercifully nobody mentions politics, although one neighbour occasionally solicits my opinion of the latest natural disaster (usually forest fires) to befall Canada. 

Another first: yesterday I clambered up a ladder to put up a blind with the help of borrowed cordless drill. I was surprised at how physically demanding this was and also frustrated that my initial measurements were off by a small but nevertheless important fraction. Benedict Ambrose, who showed me how to put the drill bit in, shouted encouragement from the sitting room until he decided he'd better wheel directly into multipurpose room to watch. At last the job was done, and we are another step forward in improving the flat. 

I was hoping to add space and colour to our sad little hall, but that will have to wait.