meet the neighbours
One of the larger (circa 1862) houses in my street hosted a street-garden party where I ate oodles of triffle and met dozens of neighbours who chose to buy homes there because of the:
- good nearby schools.
- curved, quiet, tree-lined street.
- proximity to town, buses, trains, work.
- nearby co-op store.
- beautiful old houses at reasonable prices.
Each of us introduced ourselves by name and house number, I became ‘Wendy at n(a)’. My introduction received one of two common reactions:
- Oh, the cute one that isn’t really on the street! We knew Marion who lived there before you.
- Where is that? We know [name] at n+1, n, and the empty new house n(b), there is no house between them.
Uncommonly, the Wendy House doesn’t have a frontage on the Street. It is hidden behind n+1 with the pathway approach unintuitively placed between n+1 and n(b) rather than intuitively between n and n(b). I discovered that a prior resident of this Wendy House, Marion:
- moved in soon after the stable was converted to a house, mid to late 1960′s.
- moved out in 2002.
- died in 2005.
- was a kept woman, no-one knew who her patron was. My deeds show the house was owned by Brian during her time here.
- would stand at the gateway and chat to passers-by.
My plan to become the wierd lady with the hats was generally well recieved. One neighbour may give me an old set of oak gates from a local house currently stored in his stables which haven’t been converted into a residence for a working woman.
