The other day I received a message from my next door neighbour Jo. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” she said. “But I think there’s a hole in your roof.” 

This isn’t the kind of thing you want to hear six months into home ownership. But from Jo, the tone is soft and warm. She invites me into her house and we climb up the stairs to her attic and poke our heads out her window to survey the damage. It’s true. There’s a small but obvious hole in the side of my roof. Storm Goretti had pulled the slates off clean. We look at each other and frown then giggle like teenagers. 

Jo is about twenty five years older than me and we have dinner together every month. We alternate going between my house and her house, where she lives with her sweet but sometimes sulky teenage son. 

Next door to Jo, is Matt, a kind northern builder currently renovating his house. When I knock on the door to ask if he knows anyone who might be able to fix my roof, he brings his ladder, climbs into my loft and tells me he can fix it next week, and while he’s up there he’ll make sure Jo’s tiles are all in the right place.

I slice up two pieces of clementine cake and hand them over to Jo and Matt respectively. Despite the physical hole in my roof and impending financial hole in my bank account, I feel grateful at the end of the day for a community so willing to help out at a moment’s notice.

Since moving to this road in June, I’ve noticed a certain type of kindness from the people whose lives unfold next door and opposite and around me. Mainly because they don’t necessarily unfold behind closed doors – we tend to keep ours wide open. Physically, yes, in the warmer months when the sun drenches our quiet street, but also metaphorically - in the way we always stop to chat to one another on the way in or out, or how I know I can always knock on Rachel’s door to borrow a surfboard, or pop into Jessie’s for a cuppa. 

I’m sure this level of neighbourly love is rare, so I hold it in the highest regard. And it’s a type of romance I want to invest more in. It’s a specific type of relationship – to be a neighbour. It lies between the kindness of strangers and the intimacy of friendship. Where the perfect definition of community can come to life.

Words by Cat Sarsfield