Neighbour

Our neighbo(u)r died last week. Gladys was a sweet old lady, who'd lived in the house next door 'all me life'. She wasn't much for long conversations, but by degrees, I learned that her husband died a long time ago, she had a son named Paul, and she hated the weather here as much as anyone else. She showed me how to lift the fence panel to get into our back garden when I'd locked myself out of the house. She put a nice card through our mail slot at Christmas.

She also had a hacking cough and was nearly deaf. We'd hear her in the morning, her TV on full volume, coughing like my Aunt Thelma did when she fell into the mashed potatoes. We were convinced that Gladys was permanently on the edge, so to speak.

I called the ambulance for her one day when, shortly after we moved in, I heard a crash, a few "bloody hell's" and then silence; when she didn't answer the bell, I panicked. She was fine, of course, but by the time I'd called back to cancel the ambulance, the police had arrived and I had to explain to them why I'd filed a false report. They shrugged it off and promised to cancel the ambulance.

It was on this day that I learned the value of double checking. Coincidentally, it was also on this day that I learned that no one in England ever does what they say they're going to do, so I also had to explain the situation to the ambulance men when they turned up.

Gladys fell one morning on the way to church. We got the story from her son. She broke her elbow, and then had a stroke in the hospital. She died a few days later.

Her garden chairs are stacked neatly.

Goodbye Gladys. I wish we'd had you around for tea.