Meeting the Neighbours

Hosted a highly satisfactory little soiree here this afternoon. We invited the neighbours from the five other houses on our street to come round for drinks on our deck. We had a perfect afternoon for it - sunny and pleasantly warm.

People from four houses turned up, which was great. The people that didn't come, we hadn't really expected anyway - they're the ones who bought the house next door in order to divide it up (apparently illegally!) into three flats, which they are renting out. So that situation made for some interesting conversation around the punch bowl! ;-)

There's lots of young people on our street, which is lovely:

• B. and D. live at the edge of the lane, facing the main road; they are in their late 30s, have two little girls, and are super friendly (they came over to introduce themselves shortly after we moved in last fall).
• G. and A. are about our age, live at no. 3, are immigrants from Australia, and have been in their house about two years. A. works at the same university as I do.
  
• K. lives at no. 5 with his mum L. (!), who also came along this afternoon. He works for the phone company, is in his mid-30s, and seems generally OK. He bought his house last August, so like us is a new arrival to the street.
• J. lives alone at no. 2, is a bit older (in her 50s, I think) and has been in that house for over 20 years. She's a mine of information on the area and works in the planning business. She is therefore keeping an eagle eye on the folks next door to us at no. 4, with their illegal apartment-letting scheme!

Both B. and D. and J. told us stories of all the wild parties that used to happen at our place. We bought the house from three gay men, one of whom owned one of the clubs in town. The guy who owned it before them was a naval officer (and also gay). Apparently, for years, there were some pretty wild and noisy parties here that went on all weekend long, until 3 or 4 in the morning. B. says she often would get very drunk, very attractive young men at her door asking if they'd come to the right house for the party, and she'd gently direct them to go across the road, before trying to put her babies back to sleep... Heh. I think they're all kind of glad A. and I are positively sedate in comparison!

Anyway. Very good to meet one's neighbours, I think. It was really quite a pleasant afternoon.