On the street where I live

I like the street where I live. It’s a little piece of East London that survived the bombings of WWII, a row of honest brick terraces squeezed between council blocks and tenement housing. I love its authenticity. If you squint you can imagine Jack the Ripper disembowelling a prostitute next to the chippy, or perhaps Dick Van Dyke skipping along the rooftops with a penguin in tow. Or, best of all, Jack cutting off Dick’s head while Mary P and the children sigh with relief.

Our neighbours seemed to have survived from the same era too. Eighty-plus Julia lives next door and we share a low garden wall; she calls me “sweet’eart” and visits her brother in the next street. Jimmy and Joyce are on the other side so I talk to them about the garden, and their daughter Charmaine lives two doors down. Jimmy likes to pop across the street to have a chat with Bill most evenings, a boisterous fellow who shares a house with his wife and seventeen bikes. He repairs them and sells them on again. In fact, the people are so wonderful it sometimes feels too good to be true, like I’ve fallen asleep and woken up in 1952.

I was intrigued to see what would happen, therefore, when a clean cut gay couple moved into the house opposite ours. I first noticed them when – with my usual sense of foreboding – I pulled back the morning curtains to see what stinking turd of a day the English climate had dumped on us this time. Much to my simultaneous delight it was not only sunny but there was what can only be described as Quite The Hottie emerging from number 21.

Further surveillance from my bedroom window over the coming weeks established there were, in fact, two Hotties in residence. Well, one certifiable Hottie and one Fat-Or-Fit?; I would need to invest in a pair of binoculars to confirm the latter. They cycled to work separately - leaving at 0813 and 0840 respectively – had a penchant for Thai home delivery on Tuesdays and were fastidious about separating their recyclables from their household waste. All very interesting but it didn’t give me the information I needed; i.e. how to engender a casual, spontaneous meeting.

A chance reading of texts on the psychology of the criminal mind soon gave me the answer I needed; the hunted needed to become to hunter. The gazelle needed to run to the leopard. The mole to burrow to the garden fork. And the rabbit needed to pop by at the fox’s place, possibly for an afternoon carrot soup with celery scones on a Laura Ashley platter.

Well, obviously, nothing could be simpler. Gay men are like bloodhounds. We can sniff each other out at 60 feet across a gyrating dancefloor, drawn by the top note smell of crisp, ironed underpants blending with tones of hair wax and dirty thoughts. If I’d noticed the boys in No. 21 then it was certain that they’d noticed me.

I suddenly became very absent-minded. I’d come back from the gym, turn on the bedside light and change without drawing the curtains. Or I would realise my heinous error just as I reached my underpants, requiring me to stretch semi-nude for the curtains and causing everything to flex in an alarmingly attractive manner. On my worst days I would even be so silly as to drop my towel en route from the shower, flashing a sculpted buttock before it was whisked decorously from view.

Amazingly, my plan bore no fruits. I thus had to conclude that either 1) I’m not attractive enough to cause complete strangers to abandon the norms of social behaviour and break down my front door in a mad haze of passion, or 2) my neighbours are both afflicted with a terrible vision impairment. So sad, how disability can affect those so young.

Then, amazingly, salvation came uncalled for. I pulled back my curtains one morning to see the postman knocking on the door of No. 21, a brown box tucked under one arm. When he couldn’t raise anyone he rang the doorbells of numbers 19 and 23 but without success. It wasn’t until he began to write out a “we called but you weren’t in” note that I recognised my chance. I pulled on some trousers and a shirt and burst through the front door in the nick of time.

HW: [casually sauntering across the road] “I say, hello there. Are you trying to deliver that to number 21?”

Postman: “Yep, they’re not in. Just left ‘em a note.”

HW: “Oh, don’t worry about that my man. I can take it for you. Quite the little community we have here, always helping each other out, doing our bit wot. I take post for these chaps all the time.”

Postman: “Oh, ta. But I’ve left ‘em a note, about it being at the depot ‘n all.”

HW: [breezily] “Never mind, can’t be helped. I’ll leave them another explaining this silly misunderstanding. Just give me the…gnghh…package…let…it..go. Hrrrmph…there’s…a…good man.” [HW wrests the box free]. “Right, be off with you then. Toodle pip.”

I scurried back to my lair with the Precious intact, and scribbled a quick note laced with the faintest whiff of innuendo.

Dear lads at number 21,
The postman tried to deliver a large package to you this morning but you weren’t in to receive it. Drop by when you get a chance and I can deliver it to you instead.
Yours, HW, from number 20.

I pushed it through their postbox and then rushed off to work. Arriving home that afternoon in a lather of excitement I found that disaster had struck; the Precious was gone. It wasn’t in the living room, or the kitchen, or tucked away under the stairs. It seems the Hottie had knocked and The Sister had failed to pretend to not be home, but had instead blithely handed over his parcel without eliciting so much as a polaroid in return. Unbelievable. You’ll notice she is not nearly as community-spirited as me but thinks only of herself.

There is, however, a happy ending. Three more parcels turned up for number 11 and the clever postman handed them all over to me. Thus I did eventually get to meet The Hottie and his Annoying American Whiner Boyfriend, who is definitely punching above his weight and should check his bike brakes more carefully. Urban tragedy can strike when you least expect it.

I am also now officially The Guy Who Takes Parcels For His Street, which has allowed me to meet Henry and his delightful girlfriend Sally, Mitchell and his dogs, and Fiona and her purple rinse. It’s lovely, and so are they. Every time I hand over an oversized parcel, and they realise that someone has taken their goods and not tried to resell them on ebay, I get a little glow of contentment. Life is fine here on the street where I live.