Twenty-first century neighbours
My upstairs neighbour has just instant-messaged me to ask if the music is too loud whilst he does some spring-cleaning. This saves him walking down the stairs.
It is good to know that should a marrauding intruder get in, as long as I could lock myself into my study and crawl to my computer keyboard, I would be able to get my neighbour to run down with a baseball bat and save me. Similarly, if I am cooking something nice, and he smells it, I can email the recipe over without having to screetch up at him from the window. And when he was travelling in China, we were able to discuss the crack in the outside wall (and see his pictures of pandas) without needing to have a house meeting about it.
I like living now. In the olden days I would have had to go down to the well to have a gossip. Or at the very least, get dressed and lean over the garden fence.
It is good to know that should a marrauding intruder get in, as long as I could lock myself into my study and crawl to my computer keyboard, I would be able to get my neighbour to run down with a baseball bat and save me. Similarly, if I am cooking something nice, and he smells it, I can email the recipe over without having to screetch up at him from the window. And when he was travelling in China, we were able to discuss the crack in the outside wall (and see his pictures of pandas) without needing to have a house meeting about it.
I like living now. In the olden days I would have had to go down to the well to have a gossip. Or at the very least, get dressed and lean over the garden fence.
posted by Rachel at 10:28 am
Garden fence chat only requires a dressing gown...if the fence is high enough they can't see beneath the neck. Fed the pigs in nightie and wellies this morning - they seemed genuinely unconcerned.
It is fabulous... actual person-to-person human interaction can just take up too much time. Long live t'internet!
I know my neighbours can hear the music but then again I hear them all the time but we pretend not to notice each other mostly....
I live between two sisters who are both in their seventies and its very very quiet mostly except on family weekends which is when I retire to the allotment and play the music on my portable mp3 docking station as loud as I can.
Texting has revolutionised communication as has google chat and google talk
Long live instant communication... well as long as the oil stays around . The moment electricity goes, its back to getting up for the water round at the well as the electric pumps at the water station won't work any more.
haha I love when stuff like this happens. Sometimes my mum MSNs me from downstairs to say dinners ready...
It's the 'getting dressed' aspect of socialising that foxes me, every time. Hence I also relish working at home :).
As to dress while you're chatting with the neighbours over the garden fence ... this really to my late father.
Dad decided, in his 50s, to lose a lot of weight, which meant none of his trousers fit any more. These he used for gardening.
One day, while taking a break from his horticultural labours to pass the time of day with a very snooty neighbour of ours, he felt his trousers descending round his ankles.
'Good God,' said my mother, when he told her this, 'whatever did you say?'
'Perfectly simple,' replies my father; 'I said, "Do you know, Mrs Middlebrooke, somehow I always knew that one day this would happen while I was talking to you?" pulled them back up, and carried on talking as nothing had happened.'
from a purely tech point of view, thats very cool!
from a 'I've lurked and never commented' viiew - thanks. I enjoy reading your blog, and for some reason posts like this take me back to living in Leyton, E, umm, 12? with my then girlfriend in the top 1/2 of a small house.
good times...
Next you will have a shared network, so that you can share you music, videos etc... Ok, maybe not videos don't know what you might leave there accidentally...
The funniest thing was my neighbour didn't know I had this blog and only found out it was the woman who lived underneath his flat when someone sent him a link to it from California!
I don't think I need to share music with him as I can already hear it perfectly well through the ceiling...
"wouldn't it be nice to get on with the neighbours, but they make it very clear they've got no time for ravers..." ("Lazy Sunday" - The Small Faces)
When I lived in London, I was so surprised that I became friends with the guy in the flat next door. We're still friends today and he recently sent me some photos of his new born son. I had expected London to be a town where people build walls between themselves and the people around them. (... and mostly it is that).