There are new neighbours hoving into view

It appears that we are about to get new neighbours.

The Builder and I spent quite a lot of time on Saturday out in the garden. He went and had a hair cut. I pootled about. The postman brought me a package of 60 small cabbage-family plants – they were due sometime in May and lobbed in on the very last day of that month. I am expecting another 60 in June. I hope they don’t come in the first week. That would be an awful lot of cabbage family items to eat at more or less the same time in winter and they’re supposed to cover late autumn to early spring!

Anyway. After a tiny jaunt out in the morning, we were back outside in the garden when there was a yoohoo yodelling from up by the house. I looked up. There were two women up there waving. I went to find out what they wanted. It seems that the yodelling one has applied to rent the empty house next door. Joanne, her name is. She had told her uncle-up-the-road of this, and that she had paid a month’s rent as a deposit. Her uncle was less than impressed. Ooooooooooh nooooooooooo was more or less his response. What did we think of the place?

I told her that I thought it was a lovely place to live. This is true. I do think it’s lovely. She says that her uncle says that Bridge Street is full of nothing but louty yobs who will make her life miserable.

Louty yobs? I ask you. Do I look like a louty yob? Louty yobs don’t spend their afternoons making pretty gardens and growing vegetables. They’re too busy out, throwing stones at people’s windows. I think I’m quite offended!

Do we have teenagers in the street. Well yes, we do. But there’s nothing wrong with them. One of them feeds the cat when we’re away. Children? Yes. Across the road. Nice, well behaved, happy children. People sitting on our wall, drinking smoking and swearing at 3am? Absolutely not (though in truth, we wouldn’t know if there were people thus engaged – we’re usually sound asleep at the back of the house at that time!). It’s a nice, quiet, peaceful street with people you hardly ever see and seldom hear but who engage in pleasantries when you do run across them and take in each other’s parcels when necessary.

I hope it stays that way. Joanne has an 8 year old boy called Darius. Which doesn’t necessarily inspire confidence.

(Well, if she can be worried about the presence of teenagers and kids, I can be equally unreasonably prejudiced against an 8 year old called Darius. Though I’m sure he’s very pleasant, really.)

They’re (probably!) moving in next weekend. We shall be in Salisbury.

We had lunch in the Three Merry Lads on Sunday. I had tagliatelle with seafood sauce, not wishing to have a proper Sunday lunch. I was intending to have a proper Sunday dinner – roast lamb and everything – and I can’t manage two full proper Sunday meals on the same day. I wouldn’t have had the tagliatelle had I read the specials board properly. What it really was, was chargrilled tuna, sat on a bed of tagliatelle and seafood sauce. And excellent meal. But rather more than I really wanted if there was to be roast lamb, roast Jersey Royals, carrots, broccoli and Yorkies at 7:30. Tabitha and Gareth were calling for dinner on their way home from attending Art’s wedding on Saturday. Though Art’s name is really Alex. And it was Megan’s wedding too. I’ve met Megan. Once. In The Peacock in Bakewell one Saturday lunchtime. Anyway, Taffa and Gaz were coming for dinner after the happy event and a day recuperating. By the cunning plan of not eating all my lunch, I managed to find room for my roast lamb. Taffa, Gaz and The Builder seemed to have no trouble with theirs :-)

Peter rang while T and G were with us. He seems to be getting better. We’re going to see them in a couple of weeks. Peter and Joan. And, as it happens, Tabitha and Gareth.

Monday very nearly saw me recaptured by the 1950s. The Builder went off to work, leaving me at home in my slippers and dressing gown. I escaped from the 1950s briefly to SKYPE Stella and Tony. Then I went and cleaned the kitchen. I moved everything off the benches and cleaned underneath. I washed things. I cleaned the toaster (why it hadn’t burst into flames is a mystery to me – there were SOOOO many crumbs in it!). I even cleaned the tiles. I made another stew, though this was not for The Builder on his return from work. We had pork steaks instead. I pottered in the garden. The Builder came home and we went to the allotment and planted out the sweet potato slips, and two pumpkins and cucumbers. And then we went home, watched telly, had dinner and I went to bed at half past nine. Cleaning is VERY tiring and obviously shouldn’t be indulged in all that often. I shall avoid all cleaning next weekend! Though I might have a hair cut on Saturday morning before we go.