gathering evidence

I think Nicky frets sometimes that I'm at risk of developing into a rake-through-the-bins, peer-over-the-hedge, tutting/curtain-twitching/stick-waving codger when I reach codgerdom. Apart from frequent glances into the street outside I don't think I'm at risk at all. Half the time I run to the window and stare out is because I've spotted someone staring into the flat; perhaps passers-by are thwarted by the closed-shutter blankness of the former retail premises beneath and have to look up a floor further. A returned stare usually stops them and if it doesn't it might one day provide extra amusement if someone walks into a lamp-post after trying to stare back. I'll admit that I will quite happily look out of the window if I hear an interesting noise or spot an amusingly-dressed entity walking past without fear of the activity being classed as curtain-twitching.

Likewise with neighbour-activities... it's hard not to register upstairsclumpyfootwomanneighbour returning from a night out at three in the morning purely because she then spends twenty minutes clumping across her uncarpeted bedroom with extremely clumpy drunk footsteps and wakes us up. Next-door neighbours are generally extremely pleasant although they did manage to knacker the door lock once by applying excessive force to a sticky key. Upstairs-but-one neighbour is very pleasant, is the only other resident to attend to the garden and does nice things like pick up youth-beer-litter from the path between St. Leonard's and the hill. The rest of the people in the building are mostly unknown: there are two People With Bloody Dogs (thankfully nothing left in the garden yet but they do occasionally attack Nicky's balcony-plants), two People With Sodding Cats (occasional smells in the stairwell), a new guy who arrived yesterday and the bloke who turns up every couple of weeks in a van, sweeps the floor of the empty retail premises beneath onto the pavement and smokes five million fags whose smoke gradually drifts upwards into our living room over the course of the next day. There used to be some utter pikeys in the beneath-next-door flat who had the occasional raging swear-peppered barney which could be heard through the floor but they were replaced a few months ago by altogether quieter people.