New neighbours

My new neighbours - will they be okay or will they be the neighbours from hell? Will they be friendly and welcoming or will they be sullen, snobbish and standoffish?

It's the question I always ask myself when I'm moving house, and since I've lived in thirteen different homes, I've asked it a lot.

If I knew my neighbours would be a pain in the butt, I might very well have cancelled the move, but usually there's no way of knowing what they're like until you actually move in and find out. Short of grilling all the other neighbours, or spying on them for a week or two, you're in the dark.

We've seen the whole range of neighbours, from the charming couple who took in our parcels when we were out and trimmed our hedge for us, to the anti-social arseholes who had all-night parties twice a week and ignored every complaint.

Most neighbours were neither one or the other, just inoffensive, unassuming types who kept to themselves and wanted no contact other than "hello there" or "have you seen my missing car keys?" Their lives were a complete mystery until the day we moved out. For all I knew, they were kidnappers, drug dealers, internet trolls, bondage enthusiasts, you name it.

When I lived in a bedsit in Abbey Road, London (yes, that Abbey Road) the elderly woman upstairs proved to be an alcoholic who would reel in at any time of the day or night, stinking of whisky and sometimes throwing up on the stairs. She was well beyond help, even if I'd known what help to offer.

In another bedsit at the Angel, Islington, the landlord lived upstairs and was also an alcoholic. My requests for repairs or properly-functioning appliances or removal of the putrid rubbish dump outside my kitchen window would be brushed aside in his hurry to get to the pub and down a few more pints.

Our best neighbours were probably a lovely couple called Ricky and Sheila who became good friends and helped us out of all sorts of difficulties. It was one of our saddest days when we heard Ricky had died in a head-on collision with another car. By some miracle, his daughter Katy, who was in the passenger seat, survived with nothing but a few bruises.

Not rude enough

I find it hard to insult people. No matter how offhand or unhelpful or condes-cending someone is to me, I have trouble answering them in kind or showering them with abuse.

It goes against the grain to call someone fucking stupid or a mindless arsehole. Or even a useless prat. It always seems to me that upping the ante like that will be counter-productive. They'll get ruder, I'll get angrier, and nothing positive will come of it.

I tend to shrug off a disappointing response and either continue to be polite and reasonable or walk away from it. I also assume there's probably a good reason for their rudeness - they hate their work or they've got a blinding headache or they've had one too many awkward sods to deal with. Or all three. So I'm reluctant to pile on the aggravation.

Perhaps I'm too charitable by half, too sensitive to other people's feelings and too inhibited about expressing my own. On the other hand, perhaps those who're always ready to answer truculence with more of the same are too impulsive.

But people who blow their top easily soon get a reputation for being difficult to handle and best avoided wherever possible. They may get what they want in the short term, but in the long term their fiery reputation does them no good.

People who have violent spats in public just strike me as embarrassing and childish rather than assertive. "Act your age" seems more fitting than "Good for you." Of course we all secretly enjoy the spectacle of a no-holds-barred slanging match, as long as it's happening to someone else, but at the end of the day it probably doesn't gain much. In fact it's just fucking stupid.