Love thy neighbour ... apparently

 

Sometimes when we buy something from the Internet and we are out when the delivery man comes, he leaves the item with our neighbour. I don't know if this has ever happened to you because you've never written about it. It may have happened and you did not saw fit to comment publicly about this occurrence. But it did happen to us with dire effects.

The other day the doorbell rang and the delivery man left a package with us for our neighbour who was out at the time. We waited for the neighbour to come and collect it later in the day but he did not do so.

Our house is number 835. So I went to see the guy next door, at Number 833. He said he had not ordered anything on-line and was not expecting a package. He asked me for the name on the package and having tried to read it because it was smudged from the rain, I said, "the name's obliterated!" He replied, "As you know, my name is Ferguson!"

So I went to the neighbour on the other side of our house, Number 837. Over here the numbers are even on one side of the street and odd on the other. We are No. 835 and going uphill there are 837, 839, 841 and so on; and downhill there are 833, 831 and so on.

The neighbour at 837 said he did not expect a package either. So I tried his neighbour at 839, and 841 and all the way uphill to 997. No one was expecting a package.

So I walked downhill to our house and tried neighbour 831 and all the way down to house 733; no one claimed the package which was getting heavier by the minute. Or perhaps I was getting tired.

I walked back home uphill and then it occurred to me that perhaps the courier meant to deliver it to the neighbour across the road from us at Number 834. So I tried him, and all houses uphill all over again on the opposite side of the road, and all the way downhill.

No one admitted to owning the package.

I got home, tired and frustrated at being a Christian and a good Samaritan. I thought perhaps the delivery man meant neighbour in the Biblical sense and the package was meant for someone at one of the four corners of the globe. (Do globes have corners?)

I rang the courier company. They said they could not identify the delivery address from the description I gave them on the phone and would I mind sending them the package at their depot 200 miles away. 

As it happens, I do mind going that distance. I think Jesus should have been more precise when He said "Love thy neighbour!"

In the meantime, are any of you expecting a package you bought on-line which perhaps has been delivered to us pending collection? If so, please come and get it because I am not walking all the way to where you live.

Love thy neighbour

 

When Jesus said "love thy neighbour" He did not specify which neighbour we should love. Is it the one living on the left of our house? Or the right? Or the one whose house is opposite in the street or behind our house?

Or indeed the one living five houses down the road from us? Because it is he I am having problems with. 

In my front garden I have put a statue of Superman. It is life-size and made of marble. It has professionally been installed there by professional statue installers. It is on my property. It has been there for about three weeks now. No one has complained.

Except ... the neighbour living five houses down the road. 

At first he wrote me a letter which he put through my letter box. It said that the statue was an eye-sore and should be removed. He did not have the courage to come and speak to me. I ignored the letter.

A few days later he saw me in the front garden as I got home from work. He asked me if I got his letter and I said that I threw it away. He said the statue brought down the tone of the neighbourhood. I pointed out that another house down the road has two lions on either side of their front gate. Another house has a fountain and a statue of a naked woman with water splashing all over her. They are also made of white marble like my statue. Will he object to them too?

He replied that those statues were art. Mine was an eye-sore. It is not classical in design. He added that people often put lions outside their doors, and statues of nudes either ladies or of Michelangelo's David or similar in style. These are considered stylish. Whereas no one has ever put a Superman with his hand raised to the sky and about to fly. 

I politely bid him good day and went in my house. The next day I received a letter from his solicitor threatening to take me to Court for lowering the tone and house prices in my area with my Superman statue. I was asked to remove it at once or they will file a case against me.

I went to see my solicitor. He was not there. Another solicitor was there instead. I had my doubts about him as soon as I saw him.

Instead of having a handkerchief out of the breast pocket of his jacket he had a KFC chicken leg instead. Now I like KFC, but there is a place and time for everything. And putting a chicken leg in your top pocket whilst meeting a client is neither the place nor the time. 

He stood up to greet me and realised he had a packet of French fries potatoes stuck to his bottom. He had obviously left it on the chair and then sat on it. He took it off and put it in his drawer "to eat later" as he said. Apparently, he was not expecting me to come in and was having lunch because he was too busy.

Then he asked me, "Do you know how to spell jurisprudence?"

I shook my head. He said he did not know what it means but it would sound good in a legal letter he was writing.

Eventually, we discussed my case. He advised me to turn the argument or debate away from the statue and side-track it into a discussion as to what is art.

Is Michelangelo's David art? How about a statue of Mickey Mouse? Or how about Rodin's "The Kiss" with a naked man and woman kissing each other? Would it be appropriate to have that in my front garden? What if, instead of Rodin's statue I had a large bigger than life-size painting/mural or photo on my wall of two nude people in that pose? Would my neighbour approve of it or say it is not art?

"Tell him you will remove the statue of Superman with a beard and glasses to make him resemble you, and you will replace it with Rodin's The Thinker. You know the one? A naked man sitting on a toilet," he concluded with a smile.

"What is art?" he asked with a wry grin, "What is truth? What is beauty? What is a KFC chicken leg?"

I left him and wrote a polite letter to my neighbour's solicitor (five houses away) asking him what is art anyway and suggesting that I will remove the statue and replace it with another one of Rodin's Kiss.

He replied the next day saying there is no need to remove my Superman statue.

Love Thy Neighbour ... He said.

I have yet to understand what Jesus meant when He said, "Love Thy Neighbour".

I mean, does the man who lives a few streets down the road, just round the corner by the shops, about a quarter of a mile from my house, my neighbour or not?

I see him every now and then, and he makes an inane comment like, "turned out nice today",  or "it's raining cats and dogs again", and I nod politely in agreement with a smile. Personally, I find him boring. But should I really love him? He lives too far to be my neighbour; so can I ignore him? I don't like boring people. Although I guess God loves them seeing He created so many. Perhaps He created boring people so that we may appreciate the interesting ones.

How about you? Do you have good neighbours? Or are they nosey ones? Or noisy ones for that matter.

Are you a good neighbour?

I think I am. Last Christmas we had a party in our house. Many friends and relatives turned up. I remembered an old lady living a few houses down the road. She lives alone. You could call her my neighbour because she does not live far. With the party in full swing I went out to her house and asked to borrow some chairs. She refused. What a selfish neighbour she was. And at Christmas too!

When I lived in London we had nosey neighbours. They were always looking at us from their house which overlooked ours. Whenever we were in the garden they were at their window looking at us. It was unnerving.

I did not want to hang our clothes out to dry because I did not want them to see my underwear. I think underwear are private, don't you? They should not be seen whether you are in them or not. And if you are not in them then it is more rude because you're standing there with no underwear.

Also, I did not want our clothes hanging out on the line in case they crapped all over them. I mean the birds ... not the neighbours! How could the neighbours crap on our washing from their window? That would have been an all powerful mighty flying crap!

In the part of London where we lived it was prohibited to hang your washing on a line if it was visible from the street. I checked the local by-laws. It said nothing about the neighbours watching our washing from their window and seeing what kind of underwear I wear. Or crapping on them, for that matter.

The whole situation got embarrassing because I did not want to tell them to stop looking at my underpants in case they got the wrong idea. Also, I did not want them to know that I saw them looking out of their window at my underpants.

So I said nothing and they continued looking at my underpants. Until one day we stopped hanging our washing out on the line.

My wife suggested we hang our clothes as normal but not my underpants.

I refused, because then the neighbours would think that I wear no underpants.

What is worse do you think? Them seeing my underpants on the washing line, or them thinking I wear no underpants?

And it wasn't just the washing line I was concerned about. In that house in London we had a small swimming pool in the back garden. A heated pool no less.

I got so self-conscious going out in the pool or to sunbathe in case they saw what swimming trunks I was wearing. I shan't ask you what is worse, them seeing me in my swimming trunks or with no trunks at all.

What do you think?

Gilbert ... Gone

This is Gilbert. He lives a few houses down the road from us. Next to that house with the red door. You know, the house with the roses in the front garden, and a red door. With a blue car parked outside. Well, Gilbert lives near there. Or should I say lived near there. Because I have just been told by a neighbour that Gilbert moved last week. He went down South. A place called Bognor Regis in the South of England.

Now this makes me sad. Apparently Gilbert lived down our street for three years and now he's moved South and I'll never see him again. Admittedly, I never saw him, or knew him when he lived down the street. Well, I may have seen him but not recognised him as Gilbert. We were never introduced and I didn't even know he was living down the street, let alone he was Gilbert. He could have been any Tom, Dick or Peter living down the street or any where else for that matter. But he wasn't. He was Gilbert. And he lived down the street. And I never met him. Talked to him. Or possibly have been a friend with him. That's sad.

They say a stranger is a friend you are yet to meet. Well, there's no chance of that with Gilbert is there? He came. He lived. He went. And I didn't even know he existed. Probably, he didn't even know I existed. That's sad.

And that's what makes me sad. How many other Gilberts are there down our street that I know nothing about? They would not be called Gilbert, of course. That would be a coincidence. But whatever they are called I don't know they exist and they don't know I exist. That's sad.

I go to church frequently. I often sit in the same place, behind the pillar out of sight of the priest. I see many people in church. They often sit in the same place. I don't know all their names, and have not spoken to all of them. I just know them by sight. The old lady with a walking stick. The old man with a moustache. The couple with their children and so on. They are all people coming to church on Sunday and no doubt giving God a headache with their problems and their different wants and requests. I just go to church and for the most part I ignore them, and they ignore me. That's sad.

The other Sunday, the man who gives out the hymn books as you enter the church, what is his name? You know? Tall man, with a limp. In his sixties. Anyway, he told me that Mrs Haricot had died. I did not know who Mrs Haricot was. I did not know she was alive let alone that she is now dead. The man with the hymn books told me she sat on the left, just by the Statue of St Anthony, over there ... Come to think of it. I remember an elderly lady always dressed in black who always sat over there. Well, she is now dead. That's sad.

I never knew her. But I could have. She was there every Sunday and I never spoke to her. And she never spoke to me. We could have been friends. But we were not, because we never spoke to each other. We both went to church every Sunday and bothered God with our problems rather than bothering about each other. That's sad.

Gilbert makes me sad. Mrs Haricot makes me sad. The man with the hymn books makes me sad. And the old lady with the walking stick. And the man with the moustache. And the couple with their children. These are all people who are here today and probably gone tomorrow. To Bognor Regis I shouldn't wonder. Have you ever been? Don't bother ... nothing to write home about. That's sad.

And all the Bloggers who visit me and I visit them ... they make me sad. Because I don't know them either. They are like Gilberts. People known by name only. But to me, they are more than just names on my monitor. They are real people. I believe they are mostly good people with their families, their friends, their lives and their hopes. We visit each others' blogs and leave a short message, saying "Hi" and that's it ... We really don't know each other and chances are we will never meet in real life because of distance, I suppose. That's sad.

And what happens when someone suddenly stops blogging and visiting? Their blog posts have stopped suddenly with no explanation. What is the blogging etiquette then? Do you write to them checking they are OK? Or is that not the done thing? I don't know ... and that's sad too.

Personally, I just pray for them. And give God a headache as I add to my list of prayers.