Halloween just came and went! Firstborn Son and Middle Child are too old for trick-or-treating but Only Daughter is not. We spent a companiable evening gutting and carving five pumpkins the night before.  On the day, she applied ghoulish face paint and went around the neighbourhood begging for sweets. I illuminated our monstrous pumpkins with tea lights and placed them on the porch to indicate that my neighbours’ kids were welcome to ring the doorbell. I’d purchased 5 kilos of tooth-destroying, mostly revolting, entrail-rotting sweet treats because I know that for one night only, the usual rules do not apply. All my neighbours will be doing the same. Actually, some of my neighbours have done considerably more than carve a couple of pumpkins: their entire exterior facades have been decorated with skeletons, spiders’ webs, bats, ghosts and ghouls.Thing is, my neighbours are great. And that got me thinking about how (to quote the theme tune from an old classic) “good neighbours become good friends”  [or babysitters, or marathon partners, or godfather to your FirstbornSon]

It all started when I was a teenager. I used to babysit for our next-door neighbours’ sweet little girls. I was hopeless at getting them to bed, and we had an unwritten rule that they’d scramble into bed as soon as we heard their parents’ key in the lock, and they’d pretend to be fast asleep. To this day, I’m not sure we fooled anyone…

My next memorable neighbour was many years later. It was my first proper place, I’d moved in shortly after graduating as a nurse, I’d got my first job, I was proper adulting! She knocked on my door one evening and announced we would be friends. Ok, that might not be an exact rendition of the story, but it’s pretty close. And she was right, we became (and still are) friends. If I’d known she was going to make me do the London Marathon, I probably would have pretended I wasn’t home… but thanks to her, we did, and I am eternally grateful. Sure, not so much at the time, when we were training all through the winter and it was gruelling. Thanks to her, I revised my ideas of what was achievable. We crossed that finish line together. But the credit is all hers because she took charge,  she took the mental load, all I had to do was show up for the training runs, which she’d mapped (pre Google maps, with a piece of string that got longer every week…)

After a couple years, having finally applied do my midwifery conversion course, I moved to be closer to my chosen university and its affiliated hospitals. For a couple of years, I had perfectly British neighbours. We were polite acquaintances and it was, well, normal. When they moved, and the new owner arrived, I thought it would be perfectly acceptable to knock on their door and announce that we would be friends. He might not remember it exactly like that, but whatevs,  we became (and still are) friends. It shouldn’t have happened. We were working in the same hospital, across the corridor from each other but he was a tiny-baby doctor and by then, I was a home birth midwife. Not gonna lie, NICU doctors and nurses didn’t used to hold home birth midwives in high regard. They didn’t realise that without us, some of our women would have been free birthing, and nobody wants that.  Maybe it’s better now… nevertheless  he stood by as I went onto labour at home with Firstborn Son, fully intending to practice what I’d preached. He probably breathed a humongous sigh of relief when I took myself to hospital after deciding that, marathon or no, I wasn’t that strong! To be fair  the marathon was 5 hours. I was 48 hours into that first labour when I admitted myself onto my own ward. I’m not sure he knows how grateful I was for his help in those early days. I named him godfather.

I was connected to my next set of neighbours (in a looser sense) as fellow mothers of little boys that spent countless hours in the local park. It had a little playground and, more importantly, a little café, making it an unofficial hub for conversation-starved, sleep-deprived mums. We’d nurse our cappuccinos on cold winter days while pushing swings, hovering by the slide, running next to the merry-go-round. We were friends with all the neighbours’s dogs too.

We moved again to be closer to my parents and the French school. Being from the best country in the world (biased? Moi?), I was keen for my kids to be fully immersed in French culture… and for them to be bilingual. So I now live in a 70s (uniform redbrick cubes, super functional, spacious but unimaginative) housing development which is built around a couple of gorgeous communal gardens. Very family friendly. The boys could be let loose alongside the neighbours’ kids. They could get together to kick a ball (not gonna lie, there were a few heated discussions as to whether it was ok for a bunch of small boys to play football on the grass…) They also had epic nerf gun battles (look, I wasn’t keen on these garish plastic shooters but it’s more innocent then it sounds, they shoot foam pellets). They could ride their bikes. They spent many happy active hours outside.

Now that they are all growed up, I look fondly at the next generation of kids who, I hope, will have as much fun.

I’ve had one next door neighbour couple since the beginning.  They are quiet and reserved, and I often felt guilty, knowing that when the kids were small, we were loud; knowing that there was no way they couldn’t hear us… but they have been kind and understanding and never once complained. Middle Child’s best friend lives 5 doors away. He babysits for 2 gorgeous little boys 8 doors away. My other next door neighbour (who has also been very tolerant of auditory excesses) and I would get together over a bottle red to lament the state of the world, and these gossip sessions gradually expanded to include the other close neighbours. It’s very sociable.

Obviously where there are neighbours, there’s the neighbours whatsapp group. This is like the class whatsapp (if you have school-aged kids) but instead of begging for homework deets that your kid ought to know, you get to ask about a decent plumber. Both are extremely valuable sources of information. Both need to be on mute. Because when things kick off, well, things can get tangential, existential, just-in-case-ical, downright whimsical. But you can always trust that one of your neighbours knows someone reliable for whatever you need. Park in the wrong spot, however, and things get messy!

I’ve been very lucky. I know that. But I learned early on that if you talk to your neighbours good things often happen. Yes, even in London.