We were on a walk around a neighbouring area – a very pretty little hamlet. With daughter (15) and son (12). My son began with:
SON: It’s really nice round here. I do love our house though – and I was going to buy our house off you, when you’re old.
ME: Nice to know. Don’t I have a say in the matter?
SON: No. Not by then. You’ll be at the mercy of me. Anyway, I think I might buy a house here instead.
DAUGHTER: If you can afford it. The entire economy will have collapsed by then. And we’ll all be forced survive by eating dock leaves.
SON: Anyway, I was thinking – what happens when you move somewhere?
ME: Well… you pack up for weeks and weeks, then the removal vans arrive and then you unload it and…
SON: No, no – I meant…like – how do you meet your new neighbours?
ME: Well… they might see you outside and say ‘Hi I’m whoever from number 24, glad to see you’re moving in as the ones before you were right weirdos.’ That’s how it happened with us. The last two times, actually.
DAUGHTER: Those poor people. Thinking we weren’t a bunch of right weirdos…
SON: That’s a bit boring.
ME: Or sometimes, you might pop round to theirs and say ‘Hi – we’re the new people at number 32. Just wanted to check that we weren’t parking anywhere that’d upset anyone.’
SON: That’s even more boring.
ME: In the old days it was nicer. On our street – people like your Grandma would bake buns or a cake for people moving in.
DAUGHTER: Well, Grandma would bake cakes for anyone. Even for Harold Shipman. Probably.
SON: Who’s Harold Shipman?
DAUGHTER: He was a serial killer and mum was sick all over his wallflowers once.
SON: She WHAT? Why?
DAUGHTER: She was having a teenager party next door to his house and they were all underage drinking. Grandad arrived and he dragged her outside and she threw up all over Shipman’s flower bed.
SON: Wow.
DAUGHTER: So, I think that she drove him to it. I think that Shipman woke up the next day and saw the state of his garden and said – right – today I’m…
ME: Okay. Enough of that, thanks. Back to the neighbours.
SON: Yeah, well. I was just thinking… that it’d be a bit more exciting. With the neighbours when you move somewhere. Like… I thought that they might do some sort of ritual, welcoming dance – like this…
(SON proceeds to perform a strange and contorted dance, something to akin to the Haka, incorporating the word ‘welcome’. A few people are looking over their garden walls at us – a mixture of pity and concern)
SON: So, they don’t do that then? For new neighbours?
ME: No…
SON: (Suddenly noticing the onlookers) Oh no, oh no… what if that that was… offensive or racist to someone’s culture? I’m really worried now!
ME: It wasn’t offensive or racist. But it was … definitely something.
DAUGHTER: God, I can’t wait to get back to school.
