Grumpy Oldie Man
Fake yellow lines make bad neighbours The parking row that finally sent me over the edge matthew norman
You will have seen the distressing news that Neighbours, the Aussie soap that gave us Kylie, Jason and so much more, has been decommissioned. It goes without saying that devoted viewers such as myself, who last saw an episode in 1987, will miss it immeasurably. The one drop of consolation in this melancholic ocean is that the central message of its theme song will eternally outlive the show. ‘Neighbours, everybody needs good neighbours’ – and especially of the kind whose proximity and innate goodness destine them to become good friends. And yet, as Nanny almost used to say, ‘I need’ never gets. For the sound of mind in towns, suburbs and above all rural villages, the only good neighbour is on holiday, or dead. Inevitably, Larry David put it best in Curb Your Enthusiasm. After a dodgy character is spotted in the area, someone suggests he ask the people up the road if they’ve seen anything. Larry scornfully points out that he’d much rather be burgled than talk to a neighbour. Perhaps I should overstate in another misguided stab at comic effect. The lovely family next to me in Shepherd’s Bush are such good neighbours that, 15 years after they moved in, we are close to opening pre-negotiations about having a drink. But you cannot extrapolate from the neighbourly spirit that qualifies my manor as the Ambridge of crystal-methsuffused west London. Take my mother’s private road in north London, in which double yellow lines are to be found. These have no legal standing. They exist solely pour décourager les autos. It was on these lines that I had just parked a few days ago when a man from a few doors along approached, making the wind-down-the-window gesture. I complied, and he asked why I’d parked on the yellow lines. 10 The Oldie Spring 2022
I had parked there, I explained, in order to bring the car to a halt. In a gutsy if flawed bid for novelty, he asked why I had parked on the yellow lines. After being referred to the answer given some moments before, he did manage to develop the crossexamination. Why had I parked on the lines, he asked, when there was an empty space on the drive outside my mother’s house? I counter-questioned whether, and if so how, this could be any concern of his. If the exchange had acquired the flavour of a dazzling All Souls high-table exchange between Isaiah Berlin and Bertrand Russell, so it went on. It was his business, said the neighbour, because he lives there. Unable to pick a hole in that, I wondered instead whether, at this particular moment in human history, he felt that this perceived problem warranted its parking spot at the forefront of his consciousness? Sidestepping the geopolitical, he stuck to the parochial. ‘Why are you always parking on the yellow lines?’ he asked. Now and again, as with the intense holiday friendship that has the life span of an aphis, the speed with which a relationship explodes truly astounds. We had been acquainted for less than 90 seconds, and I felt trapped in wedlock that had passed its best-by date many years earlier. After all, that scattergun ‘always’ is the classic identifier of a marriage curdled into passive-aggressive
I had parked there, I explained, in order to bring the car to a halt
resentment. ‘Why you do always do that?’ begins the ritual exchange. ‘Why do you always say “always”?’ is the correct response. ‘Go on – if it’s always, name me one other time I did it?’ ‘I don’t always say “always”. Tell me the last time I said “always”.’ And on it goes, all the way to court, mediation or manslaughter by dint of diminished responsibility. Examining the man more closely as Psychotic Fantasy No 27c (the ricincoated meat cleaver) took hold, I took in the wispy beard, smug demi-smile and air of moral certainty of the 1970s sociology lecturer. ‘I park here once a fortnight, at most,’ I counterstruck, ‘when a friend or carer who needlessly fears your silly yellow lines visits my mother.’ After a peremptory demand for a parking-permit application, the debate fizzled out until he departed with the shock announcement that he didn’t like me one bit. I congratulated him for saving the best until last, waiting until deep into added time to fire home an observation with which anyone normal would agree. ‘You look flustered,’ said my eagleeyed mother when I belatedly arrived with her coffee. ‘So I assume you’ve had your daily row.’ ‘I have had a minor contretemps, as it happens,’ I confessed. ‘Some prissy neighbour of yours who’s taken grave umbrage at my parking on the yellow lines.’ ‘Why are you always having childish rows with people about absolutely nothing?’ she tutted. For a millisecond, I was tempted to argue. But there didn’t seem much point in disputing that ‘always’. So I parked the objection, and headed for the internet to check out the cost of hiring a small fleet of juggernauts to grace some phoney double yellow lines.
