Honestly, even after twenty-some years of living in an urban centre, I’m still not used to having neighbours in such close proximity. I still find it weird that if I’m having a conversation in the backyard, possibly three of my neighbours can hear me.

I really miss the absolute privacy that comes from living on a farm, where there is an entire field, and sometimes several, separating you from any neighbours. You could do anything you want in your yard.

As it stands, in the summer I sometimes like to do yoga or even take my weights outside but I’m constantly looking around to make sure nobody is watching.

It’s a very strange thing to have someone just over the fence. Too close for comfort in my opinion. But it’s like complaining about taxes, there’s no point, they’re just there and always will be.

Luckily I’ve always had decent neighbours so that is something to be grateful for. The house kitty corner to us now has something shady going on in it, I think they’re running drugs out of it but it really doesn’t affect us and sometimes my hunches are wrong anyway.

At the same time, when I’m looking for a positive in all of this, I tell my sisters, who both live in the middle of nowhere, how I appreciate having other people close by, as a security type of thing.

They’ve never left the farm life and never will so they are used to it but when I think about someone driving into your yard in the middle of the night to rob you or murder you, who is going to help you out there? That’s very scary to me. I mean of course they all have “self defence” items on hand but who wants to get in a predicament like that.

At least here, where I live, maybe if I screamed loud enough and for long enough someone would hear and come help me, or call the police.

When I was in high school a man wandered into our yard in the middle of the night. We still laugh about my sister’s shaky voice when she happened to get up right then and saw him standing on the deck looking in our living room window. (Picture a redwood deck up against a trailer).

We did have a large German shepherd dog at that time but in the winter sometimes Dad would let him sleep in the porch so I think that’s how this guy got so close without losing a limb.

Anyway, he meant no harm, he said he’d been kicked out of a vehicle on the highway and needed to use the phone to call someone to come and get him. Dad let him use the phone and then told him he would give him a few minutes head start to get down the drive way and back to the road before he let the dog loose on him.

And so that was that.

So to answer the prompt, I would say good neighbours are those you don’t even know are there. Please don’t be outside when I am. Please don’t look at me when I’m doing yoga. Please don’t have parties or act raucous. Please hear me scream if I need you.