Between the Window and the World

Window Observations

Looking out of my window again this morning, the story remains the same. On the second floor by the window sits the man I wrote about over four years ago. However, for the first time, I saw him eating. It might have been some fruit, as he was using his hands, and what looked like a large potato wedge might have been cut from an apple.

Blog - Coronavirus streets in Manchester - XLII

Surely my eyesight can't be that good, yet I cannot doubt my powers of observation. Brian, on the other hand, seems to have sent another pair of reading glasses to the ocular orthopaedic hospital, one leg lost to the incident of backside indiscipline. No other excuse could be manufactured on the fly.

Blog - Thought Picnic: Sitting pretty and bringing calamity

Anyway, back to my neighbourhood. There is a new arrival who steps out of the apartment, takes a few puffs of her inhaler, then lights a cigarette. How you could clearly have a respiratory condition and then compound it with the gradual destruction of your lungs is a case of utter bafflement that escapes me.

Beyond the Window

As I stepped out to attend church, it was minus four degrees Celsius, but fresh and sunny. By the time I left church, it had snowed, the ground coated white. I was fortunate to have the right kind of shoes on, the soles with ridges that gave a sturdy grip enough to stop me from slipping.

It was already above zero. After a cup of lapsang souchong tea, I was ready to have a nap. The man at the window was back, taking another glimpse of what might be unchanging but for the traffic, yet exciting enough as a variance to routine.

Then again, as he observes his little world from that window, a flurry of snow seeks to obscure my line of sight. Life continues for all, but I'm blessed to experience a bit more by getting out and meeting people.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Love Thy Neighbour - II

Neighbours always matter

Early this morning, I found myself answering a question posed on Twitter that garnered a lot of interest and it stated, “Single people who live alone, who takes care of you when you’re ill?”

Much as I do not follow the original poster on Twitter, as it had come up on my timeline, I felt there was a need to answer the question from my own experience. This became even more pertinent when I read some responses, many of which suggested people just took care of themselves, though I guess ill to them was probably mild or just being indisposed, as in slightly unwell.

If ill were to involve having to be admitted to hospital or incapacitation due to serious or terminal disease where agency and ability are severely limited, you would hardly be doing things yourself because you just cannot. That is where I have a story that I have written about in a few blogs that will be referenced below this piece.

My answer was: “Neighbours and friends, that's when I realised loving my neighbour as myself was for my safety, not an inconvenience. I had cancer, I was in the hospital for 18 days and when I returned home, I had literally no strength for anything, my neighbours came to help with everything.” [Twitter]

Blog - Love Thy Neighbour (October 2009)

Cultivate neighbourliness

I went on to develop the context of my response about cultivating neighbourliness because when something happens to you, it is probably your neighbours who will need to attend to you first and then contact others that need to know about your situation.

“Cultivate neighbourliness, put the effort in knowing the people living around you, make conversation and further, socialise, invite them for tea or dinner. There are times when having your neighbour check on you might be the only help you have before family and friends know.” [Twitter]

Another thing I wanted to stress about neighbours was that there might be no similarities or commonalities between you and your neighbours, but just the proximity of living spaces. You have to be ready to embrace their humanity in all its difference and diversity just as the Good Samaritan to the stranger.

I could imagine the surprise of some when I said my closest neighbour that did my laundry, some cooking, collected my medication from the pharmacy and did some shopping amongst other things were a Dutch and French-German couple.

Neighbours are your safety

We had cultivated our relationship for years, they were always on the lookout for me, when they first moved in, I welcomed them, they could use my parking space, I celebrated the birth of their children, and if I was in town, we would spend New Year's Eve together into the early hours of the New Year. I was frequently invited for dinner, they were family. A decade after I left the Netherlands, we are still in contact, and I will forever owe a debt of gratitude to them.

Without trying to rewrite blogs that I have written before as this is just to reiterate the usefulness of neighbourliness, I conclude with a saying that became my guide for every place that I have lived. “Love thy neighbour as thyself is not an inconvenience, it is for your safety.”

Blog - Love thy neighbour and bike off

Coronavirus streets in Manchester - XLII

Seeing my neighbour

Sitting in my swivel chair chatting to my lover, I look out of my window to see him who sits by the window on the second floor of the building across the quiet road from me and I wonder what he sees in this world from that perspective.

He might also see me as I look up though I have never waved to him in any sort of acknowledgement, then the main road that I will not have a view of except if I change my position might present a variety of vehicular traffic; cars, lorries, bicycles, and dreaded e-scooter of all colours, driven by genders only descriptive if he can see that well, along with the speed of travel regulated by changing traffic lights at the junction beyond our view.

What are their stories?

Lest I forget, his wife and I think that is her role if my eyesight serves me well, sometimes takes that seat too. I would think the vantage view is sitting by the window on the left from my viewpoint as there can’t be much to see seating on right and looking out to their left.

Maybe, just maybe they need company as they sit in limbo without friends or family, but the lifelong companionship of each other reminiscing of a life that only exists in memories fading away, a youth spent that could be stories to listen to, if we just knew each other. These notes I scribbled down on my notepad as my lover watched wondering what I was up to and this is it. Another situation in Manchester in these pandemic times.

Love Thy Neighbour

Trash on our screens

When I was growing up in Nigeria in the 70s and 80s, whilst there was a lot of homegrown material produced for television, I must say we were a dumping ground for a whole range of British situation comedies and farces.

Along with those were some upwardly mobile American ones about African-American families and businesses on the up or in trouble, I cannot say there was much we could identify with in many of these offerings as Nigerians, but sometimes our local fare only had a few geniuses and the rest did not impart knowledge, wisdom or insight, they just reinforced the bondage to animist customs and affirmed superstitions that flew in the face of logic and reason.

The embarrassment of neighbourly love

I could remember watching The Many Wives of Patrick (UK), Good Times (US), Sanford & Son (US), Different Strokes (US), and Only when I laugh (UK), but there were some borderline ones that tried to address racial harmony like Mixed Blessings (UK) and Mind Your Language, but the most obnoxious and entirely politically incorrect that today cannot air without getting millions of complaints of false concern would be Love Thy Neighbour [1].

This was a story about a white working-class family coming to terms with living with black neighbours in the 60s & 70s. Whilst the wives got along well, the husbands just jibed at each other, if they had kids, I am sure the street would have had weekly race riots for what the kids would have heard their fathers say.

Notable was also the older man in the pub who never bought a drink for himself or others but when rounds were being bought he was prompt to say, “I’ll have half”. He always ended up with half a pint of beer and his glass in a manner of speaking was never empty.

These people were neighbours but really, not much love was lost between them.

A commandment seeking obeisance

I, being in hospital for 18 days brought home to me some essential teaching about Love Thy Neighbour very radically different from that in the situation comedy.

In 9 different places, if you were reading the 17^th Century King James Version of the Bible, we are told in the 10 commandments, by prophets, by Jesus and in the epistles after our devotion to God to “Love Thy Neighbour as Thyself”. In modern parlance, that would be “Love your neighbour as yourself”.

This might feel very grievous for some, a burden too heavy to carry, a situation that might have deteriorated to the point that the neighbour is accursed and the personification of everything evil.

Unnecessary conflicts and discord

It is amazing that some of the most trivial neighbourly disputes are in the courts or taking up police time and fertile ground for heart disease; people who have lived beside each other for years who have cultivated an air of indifference and a complete lack of consideration for each other, that they cannot abide each other.

The tension between them is so built, that if you as much as breathed the air that passed over your neighbour’s flowers there were grounds for grand larceny at the least – this ought not to be so.

Neighbourly conflicts could probably boil down to impatience, arrogance, pride, superiority, envy, jealousy or just plain pettiness. There is a possibility every dispute would have a sprinkling of these peace-less cardiac arrest herbs that we so liberally use to spice the potential discomforts of our entire.

A safety regulation

However, I see in this commandment, not some extraneous law of compulsion and duress, but the advice of safety that applies to all humanity regardless of creed, belief, disbelief or unbelief. It is a safety regulation.

In my case, I had cultivated a relationship with at least 2 of my neighbours on my 4-apartment floor, we had each other’s keys, tended our apartments when others were on holiday, watered plants, collect mail, visit each other and sometimes dined together.

We took the time to contact each other if the passing of time or the busyness of business meant we had not seen each other for ages, we were friendly enough, and maybe more could be done.

My neighbours are family and friend

As an expatriate, my immediate family is thousands of miles away, though I have friends here and I did learn I really did not have that many, most of those I have known for over 10 years live outside this country.

All these friends, family and some well-wishers would have liked to visit me in the hospital, bring me stuff I needed and minister to my needs in ways not to accentuate my vulnerabilities.

On this matter, in particular, it was my neighbour I could ask to go round to my home and pick things up that I needed, but they went beyond the call for help to visit, bring something, do my laundry and much more, I am so grateful for having neighbours I am in some fellowship with.

My other neighbour without prompting offered to do my shopping and did do it taking a serious burden of incapacity off me.

Your neighbour is your emergency call taker

In other, circumstances, neighbours are your emergency; friends and family usually arrive later and sometimes, it is your neighbour that makes those calls because you are already too far gone to do anything yourself.

A bosom friend's wife corroborated that view, she said she had at least 3 sisters in London, but for the day of trouble or distress, both her neighbours are her points of first resort, at least in the first two hours before everyone else arrives.

The importance of cultivating and building lasting relationships with your neighbours cannot be overstated.

Love Thy Neighbour as Thyself, is not so much a commandment attached to some nerve-racking drill, it is your safety being planned ahead for you on that day when your neighbour will be an angel, your Good Samaritan. Take heed, that your pride does not lead to a fall; when in that day you shall so helplessly need your neighbour to pick you up lest you perish.

My beloved, Love your neighbour as yourself. Please be reconciled, for your safety and for peace.

Sources

[1] Love Thy Neighbour - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] BibleGateway - Quick search: love thy neighbour

Love thy neighbour and bike off

Neighbours to decadence

Neighbourliness is particularly of the essence when you live in a city like Amsterdam. For years, I have told people that Amsterdam to the tourist is a lot different from Amsterdam to the resident.

We do not all live in coffee-shops (outlets as bars that sell marijuana) or traipse up and down the streets of the red-light district (an area of Amsterdam where ladies of the night display themselves scantily clad in red-lit window boxes) looking for and libido-sapping soul destruction.

Gladly, when I arrived here about 6 years ago, my feet were firmly placed on the ground, that none of that was of any interest.

More coffee with lumps of dope

However, I do remember pre-EasyEverything Internet Café times, the shops that offered that service were coffee-shops. So, you got to surf the net and check your email in the haze of head-lifting smoke leading to drugged stupor.

Once, I arrived at the shop only to find all terminals occupied, so I sat at the bar and ordered a coffee which in Amsterdam always comes with a biscuit. I had to ask if those were space-biscuits (biscuits baked with marijuana as part of the ingredients). Thankfully, they were just ordinary biscuits.

A friend once bought a pack of biscuits and within an hour of finishing a biscuit, he was completely out of sorts for nigh on 24 hours. Which also reminds of that night as I drank my coffee, a man stood up and walked through the glass pane of the main door completely spaced-out.

As he fell into the shattered glass, he got up again and I shrieked “He will fall into the canal”, to which people said, don’t bother, he knows his way.

More money and no sense

This however was what I observed of many of my English countrymen who for the fertile business and job opportunities in the late 90s through to about 2002 in the Netherlands arrived at work each morning inebriated, drained, unproductive and incoherent.

Having spent time in a bar, a coffee shop, the red-light district or the Holland Casino where they gambled away their earnings with impunity and never felt it for the fact that they earned well beyond their wildest dreams.

Every “new money” type got themselves a Porsche 911 which they wrote off with reckless speed chases as they evaded photographic capture by speed cameras.

No, that is not my Amsterdam, even though I am an expatriate, Amsterdam is a lively city of culture, theatre, activity, and pleasure.

Go indoors next door

However, I was taken aback when my first neighbour mentioned he was baby-sitting only for me to find out later that in fact he was baby-sitting his new born son. Between our doors, I did not notice for 9 months that his wife was pregnant – I felt rotten.

So, when I had new neighbours, I decided that good neighbourliness was important; two weeks would not pass without some sort of contact. OK! I mainly visited them than they visiting me, but we maintain a very good rapport and friendliness.

A new pastime

So, this afternoon, as we had planned aforetime, I was invited for a bike ride round the outskirts of Amsterdam and we went on cycle paths that I had never travelled before, over bridges into a village (Schellingwoude) that looked like something I would see in Beatrix Potter land.

I saw a few cottages that looked like the occupants would invite me in for scones, clotted cream and Earl Gray tea, as I thought aloud, a few people we passed said very nice.

Anyway, it appears I must give my bicycle a good servicing because when my friend visits for Easter, we might be exploring a few more villages, probably with my neighbours too – if the weather is good.

References

Amsterdam Cycle Route 9: dike villages, grassland landscape, heritage tourism