Neighbours & Tourists

“We called our neighbours by their surnames; this was a custom in our village. Those who came from outside, even if only a neighbouring village and settled among us, were described as ‘T.’s wife’ or ‘K.’s husband’; these people rarely gained an identity of their own. We had closer and further neighbours; this pointed less to their physical proximity to our house, more the neighbourly ties, reflected in paying each other small favours and exchanging gossip. However, the closer neighbours kept dying. Currently on our street we had two houses which were unoccupied, including one with a ‘For Sale’ sign. My mother found it outrageous, as for the last 60 or so years there had never been any house for sale in our neighbourhood. People built houses and then passed them on to their offspring. But now the children did not want or could not stay in the village, even if they had a property there. The deaths of the neighbours inevitably affected the hierarchy of those who remained; the further ones by virtue of being still around moved to the position of the close ones…”