Meet the Neighbours

I've been meaning to post this for a while, but the week before last we attended the Eden Project Big Lunch. Essentially the idea is that on Sunday the 19th of July, as many local communities as possible, would gather together and have a kind of 'getting to know each other' picnic.

I was sceptical at first, telling Lucy that 'I already know loads of people I dont have time to keep in touch with - why do I need to know some more?'. I protested. She made me go.

Actually it was pretty good fun. We live in a new build house in the grounds of an old mansion which has been converted to flats. The mansion appears to come complete with quite a few curtain twitchers, which I was concerned would lecture me about parking my car accross the big 'keep clear - no parking' sign as is my want. Contrary to that, we were informed that anyone can park there and that as the only renters we hadn't found out because our landlord had neglected to tell us.

I ended up meeting the old dean of a major university as well as a high court judge (who informed us that our favourite restaurant is actually a front for a Thai marajuana dealing operation). We made friends with some of the people that live in the terraces next to us. A friendship that we put to good use when they had to store our dead cat in their garage for a day last week.

the main concern really is that we were the youngest people there by a good five years. Ok Lucy was the youngest person there by a good five years (I was borderline fitting in). They all had kids or were pregnant, or had grandkids so far as I can tell!

Anyway. I have discovered that it is good to know your neighbours.