Friday, October 25

Nera is very worried about her family in the Philippines.  There is a typhoon battering the area around Balatan and it is hard to keep in contact with her mother and father.  Her father is a very stubborn man and would refuse to move out even in the most dire circumstances. There is also the added worry about the house that she and Jamie own in the town. It's right on the beach and. although it's a sturdy construction, it was pretty badly damaged in the last storm a couple of years ago.  It's an on-going issue; severe tropical storms are common in this part of the world and the infrastructure and emergency response arrangements are not always adequate.

Jamie has been checking flights in case Nera has to fly back in a hurry but we hope it doesn't come to that.

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I wrote this story a couple of years ago when the next door neighbour thought it would be nice if he acquired a few chooks.

GOOD NEIGHBOURS

I’ve looked over the fence from time to time and noticed our neighbour.  He’s an elderly bloke, like me, but old-fashioned in his dress and he avoids catching my eye.  I’ve decided he was a farmer in his younger days but is now retired and his family has moved him into this cottage in a suburban street in Longford.  He was probably very surprised a few years ago when the developers moved in over his back fence, buying a couple of large blocks next to him and demolishing the shabby cottages, making room for the construction of five modern units.

Of course, he would have had to live through many months of the noise of construction, and the dust, and the persistent radios of the builders.  However, the time would come at last when the final Top-40 song was heard, and the last builder’s ute drove away.  Our neighbour might have shown mild interest when the Estate Agent’s signs were erected, and might have noticed in passing the eager buyers looking at what might be their new home.  He might have thought, like me, that all the units would be bought by oldies, like him but, when the dust settled and the removalist vans had departed, three of the units were occupied by single women, one by a single man and just the one by a retired couple of mature years, my wife and me.

I hope that our neighbour might have been pleased that his new neighbours, pushing hard up against his back fence, are very quiet.  None of us play loud music, none of us has noisy parties, none of us has loud backyard conversations.  Of course, his 1930’s wooden cottage is right on the front of his very long, pre-war block of land, and it is likely that he is remote enough not to be affected by any of the potential goings-on of these johnny-com-latelies.  By any measure, he could not be in a better position nor could he have hoped for better neighbours so, my wife and I were very surprised with a recent unforeseen development.

A month or two ago, there was movement in the neighbour’s backyard, just over the fence from our unit.  I tried not to appear too nosy but managed to take a surreptitious peek at what was happening.  A younger man, perhaps the elderly neighbour’s son, was stringing up some wire around what seemed to have been a long-neglected chook yard.  Within a couple of days, it had some inhabitants: three hens and a young rooster.

I stepped out the distance from the edge of the chook yard to our bedroom window and it is just 4 metres.   Perhaps the distance from the edge of the chook yard to the neighbour’s bedroom window is 5 times that distance.  The rooster usually starts his morning calling around 4.15am. In this warm weather we are having, it is more comfortable to sleep with our bedroom windows open and we generally sleep very soundly until the persistent crowing brings us wide awake … at 4.15!  I’m sure the neighbour, remote as he is from the chook yard, doesn’t hear them. 

And there is the dust, and the smell, and the potential for vermin.

The whole exercise has me bemused.  Are they pets, or are they expected to produce eggs?  If so, what is the point of the rooster?  The neighbour seems to have no interest in the creatures: he rarely visits them, and seldom brings them any food.  He doesn’t seem to collect any eggs and the birds  appear to lead a solitary existence surviving on goodness-knows-what.  It would not surprise me if he sometimes forgets that they exist.

But we, his neighbours, are constantly reminded that they exist.  Of course, we have options.  I could go and knock on his front door pleading with him to think of the damage he is causing to his neighbours’ equilibrium.  I could slip a note in his letter-box, threatening retribution if he doesn’t get rid of the rooster, at least, or I could go to the Council and put in a Noise Complaint.  People I have spoken to, though, suggest the Council would be unsympathetic; it is a rural area, after all. 

In the meantime, I am training myself in the arts of Zen Meditation, learning to block out extraneous noise while I seek solace and harmony in self-imposed inward silence.

UPDATE: Thursday, March 2^nd – It was very quiet this morning and we slept until 7 o’clock.  I looked over the fence and saw that the chooks had disappeared.  Is it possible they won’t return?  We can only hope.