Southend U3A

August 2023

The Family Next Door - Jenny Bowker

We have all had experiences of families next door. One such was when we were sitting down to Sunday dinner. The family next door were avid D-l-Y enthusiasts and we were used to the hammering and banging but suddenly there was a rumble and our room was full of dust and debris. Our neighbour had decided to remove his chimney breast from our semidetached home. Through the smoky dust emerged a shape which turned into our neighbour, coated in brick dust who said, in a cheerful voice, ‘So sorry, I didn’t realise the fire places were divided by single layered walls. Hope I haven’t spoilt your dinner!’

The situation was so ridiculous and we had a sense of humour and more importantly they were a pleasant, if over enthusiastic, family the problem was rectified.

We moved but were concerned at the eccentricity of our new neighbours who would celebrate Hitler’s birthday (20th April) by marching the length of our very long gardens, carrying flaming torches and singing the ‘Horst wessel lied’ and ‘umber umber umber alias aller’ songs before hoisting the nazi swastika flag. Very strange!

So, I looked up the roots of neighbour which comes from old English ‘neahgebur’, meaning near dweller, so it does not mean explicitly next door. And then I looked up definitions and came across some interesting information: Classical biblical meaning to come alongside in order to share thoughts, ideas etc. and also treatment of bad neighbours. One, put up signs, invest in thick curtains, lock your doors, seal up cracks in your home, blow your leaves and rubbish into their garden, trim plants overhanging and throw back their property, use imagery (wonder what that means) and, finally, move.

One suggestion was to create a barrier and I thought of the Frost poems about how peaceful neighbours started with a flower patch, went on to a border to protect the flower, went on to a larger wall to ‘prevent damage’ and ended up with a 6-foot wall and no contact. There are many examples in history about these walls. Was the Chinese wall (220 BC) built to deter the ravaging hordes or to keep the Chinese subjugated to their Tongs? Hadrian’s wall (AD 122) was it built to protect the romans or to prevent interaction with the barbarians? Australia put up a rabbit proof fence, bisecting Australia, ostensibly to prevent the rabbits eating their way through food crops but in effect it destroyed the nomadic way of life of the aborigine and broke down their culture. In Cyprus the Greeks built a wall to separate Turks from Greek during the 2nd world war but in effect the wall, in many cases piles of rubber tyres, has been bridged and the Nicosian’s and Greeks travel through with relative ease, although illegally, as passports are required to visit the Greek and Turkish sectors – in the same city! Probably the most modern incident of a wall is of course Berlin which started as a wire fence but because it was allowed to stand, became a 16-foot-high border dividing communities and countries.

Walls are not always physical barriers between people.

‘What!’ roared Zeus. ‘What do you mean you don’t like their colour?’ He looked around the celestial hall. The marble walls warm in the sun, the edifices glinted with gold but the floor was littered with glass shards, milky coloured iridescent shards. The floor was two foot deep in them and there was evidence here and there of scratch on the pillars.

‘Well,’ mumbled the supplicant, ‘they are different and everyone knows it’. ‘Shall I turn you all blue, or green? Poseidon would like that.’

‘O

h for goodness sake’ hurrumped Zeuss. ‘Come bac kin a. millennia and see if you have thought things through’ He crashed his golden staff on the marble floor and the supplicant vanished, Hera came floating through the pillars. ‘Ouch! She cried as one of the glass shards scratched her foot. ‘Oh husband, brother of mine, what is the matter now?

‘These measly mortals, they do nothing but complain. They want me to change their colour, they want me to make them eat the same diet, they want me to make them enjoy the same games, they want them to have just one language but cannot agree which one and some even complaint that they do not all worship the same Gods.’

‘Hera looked at a huge gold bowl which contained just three globes, of iridescent milky hue. ‘Oh, dear,’ she exclaimed, ‘another crash.’

‘Well,’ said Zeus, ‘the complaint about the shared Gods did not even include me, nor Aphrodite, not any of our family.’

‘And is this all that remains of their world now?’ She indicated the broken shards on the floor.

‘Well, I did control my temper, as the oracle recommended but when the mealy-mouthed serpent mortal complained about Pan’s music, I just couldn’t stand it any longer. So yes, the globe slipped,’ he said, trying to sound innocent.

Mnenosyne came floating into the hall. ‘Husband, dear, I remember when the bowl was filled to overflowing with globes, you have only three left, and you know how much the mortals amuse us. If you continue to chastise them in such a permanent way we will all be deprived of amusement at their antics.’

Zeus’s shoulders slumped. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Even, I get tired of the games we play at times and sometimes they really are amusing at their feeble attempts at obtaining power through wars but they are so FRUSTRATING!’ he roared.

A Millennium passed and the same supplicant appeared before Zeus. ‘Well?’ asked the bored, tired, disinterested God.

‘Well,’ said the supplicant, ‘we tried to ignore their colour but their hair is not only a different colour it is curly and they dance all the time to raucous music and they don’t eat meat.’

‘I’ve had enough!’ roared Zeus. He reached into the bowl and removed a milky white globe which he hurled with all his force at the pillar. There was a pop like a loud sigh, a scream of a thousand souls and a cry of ten thousand babes. The shards of the globe twinkled as they joined the carpet of shards in the hall. Only two globes remained.