Mike Dilger - My Garden and Other Animals

With hungry adolescents to feed next door, Lorraine bid us goodnight, and barely had we closed the door when the third neighbour of the day came knocking, also keen to welcome us to the street. Pausing only briefly to contemplate the difference between our warm reception in Chew Stoke and the decidedly chillier welcome I had received on purchasing my previous flat in Bristol, when it had taken weeks for my neighbours just to acknowledge my existence, I invited Stuart in to find a seat amongst the boxes. Stuart, it has to be said, was someone I already knew well, as until recently he had been a TV editor. Hailing from the West Midlands town of Stafford, I had always felt a kindred spirit with Stuart’s Black Country roots and especially after we had discovered during one previous discourse on football that we must have coincidentally been at a number of the same Wolverhampton Wanderers matches as kids.

Whilst helping us drain the rest of a bottle of champagne we had brought with us to celebrate the move, Stu regaled us with all the gossip about those neighbours we hadn’t yet had the pleasure of meeting and declared how wonderful it was going to be to have a drinking partner on hand, who was, firstly, not a southerner, secondly, liked talking endlessly about football and, last but not least, was willing to neck a couple of pints every now and then.

Seeing we were visibly tiring from the physical and emotional exertions of the day – and perhaps more pertinently noting the last of the champagne had been drained and we couldn’t immediately locate any more alcohol without emptying 15 boxes, Stu left for a nightcap at his own home some 50 yards up the road, but not before giving both of us one more of his ‘welcome to the street’ hugs.

With a slightly bizarre and utterly forgettable first meal in our new house of grilled sausages and steamed vegetables, and unable to watch TV because it hadn’t yet been unpacked, we watched a DVD on my laptop, before going up to bed. Yes, we had finally moved out of a flat, and now, being in a proper grown-up house, we had stairs … and did I also mention we had a garden as well?!

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