Sometimes, a friend far away writes something that, although it’s really only about their life, sends you prancing directly down memory lane.

In my case, memory lane is more of a dingy alley. I’m bred from a long line of Calvinistic farmers and although the farming itself has long been replaced by a certain urban dinginess, it’s never been quite possible for me to get past the idea that it’s a wasteful to drive a car that isn’t older than you or to live in a house where the cockroaches don’t have their own wing.

My late uncle famously taught me, when I got my first car, that the first thing you should do is take a hammer and make a dent in it in a place of your choice, so that you don’t mind how many dents it gets afterwards; he added that if you’re ostentatious enough to get a radio you should take all the knobs off the face and just leave the screws on (this was in the days before the detachable radio face). Not that this was necessary; the boot was already so badly squashed that it was more concertina than car. Still discernible, scrawled across the back in massive black letters, was the word LOSKOP. What can I say? We aren’t that posh.

When classifying bad neighbours, there are really only seven routes one can go: noise, mess, drugs, nudity, violence, madness or sex. As a teenager, I was exposed to nudity, violence, madness and sex; as a young adult, to noise, mess, madness and drugs. As a teenager, my neighbours were a naked violinist (beautiful); an angry old lady (deaf) who would turn her hearing aid up as high as it could go and then complain of unnaturally distorted noises from her neighbours; an oily divorcee (depraved) who would leopard-crawl under the gate of an evening and ask my sister and me out on dates; and a young woman whose orgasms were quite spectacular (perhaps she was watching the naked violinist). No need for any talks on the birds and the bees for me, no sir. I learnt it all from Cath at 103. Trying to get my beauty sleep before exams, I would bash on the wall, to no avail. Eventually I took to imitating her, grunting and wailing against the window in the hope that she would hear me and get the picture. She didn’t. Maybe she could tell I was faking, and thought I needed practice.

By the time we got a little older, the faces changed. We were joined by a poet, who wasn’t above sexual harassment during leisure hours; and a feisty fellow we came to know as Masturbating George. The poet drank tea and had Angst, while MG developed a strange fondness for my sister and would spend his days at the window, drooling and wanking, as she typed away at her thesis. Obviously an academic chap, we thought.

It was around this time that my sister also began leaving her car unlocked so that the neighbourhood kids could sleep in it. The car in question was a tiny Renault with rather ambitious racing stripes down the side, and a radio that was connected to the headlights using a telephone plug. It wasn’t up to much on the highway, but made a fine shelter for homeless children, who were, I might add, rather better neighbours than Masturbating George.

I’ve known a number of homeless people who made better neighbours than MG, mind you. I shared my backyard as a young adult with two intrepid braaiers who would come and light a cosy, crackling bonfire in my parking spot, sharing companionship and good cheer over a cup ‘o meths and a nice bunny chow. They did this in the company of Drunk James, who lived next door to me and never – to my knowledge anyway – did very much else, unless you count his habit of drunkenly whistling through the keyhole at my parrot in the wee hours of the morning.

“HELLO BIRDIE!” he would shout. “HELLO BIRDIE!”

There would, of course, be silence from my poor sleeping parrot.

“BIRDIE?”

“Shut up, James,” I would have to shout. “Go home. You’re drunk.”

James would shuffle off.

I got to know Drunk James because he would spend his days hanging over the fence and checking out my friends’ cars. If a clean one came to visit, he’d wink and leer.

“Niche wheelsh,” he’d say knowingly.

Come evening, he would light a braai fire in my parking bay and invite the homeless couple over. “Relaksh,” he’d say. “You gotsha bay wisha besht view.”

I should point out that my bay overlooked the garbage cans.

It didn’t seem to deter them, however. The three of them spent night after night by their cosy braai fire, laughing and telling stories. I eventually took to parking elsewhere. Nobody likes a party pooper.

I’m not the only South African who has had homeless neighbours. Nearby, a woman I spoke to – let’s call her Judith – told me she had a particularly vocal couple camping in her garden, having invited some of the neighbourhood crew to pitch a tent there. The only rule was that good fences made good neighbours; i.e. she would give them their space if they gave her hers.

Giving privacy from her side was more difficult than it was from theirs, since walls are soundproof and tents are not. Returning home one night after an evening out, she apparently heard a woman’s voice ring out through the garden, every syllable dripping with post-coital smugness.

“Justice,” it purred, “Dit was nou so lekker, ek wens my hele lyf was p**s.”

Drunk James, Post-Coital Patty and the Braai Buddies are not the strangest kids on the block, however. (No, that’s not the name of a band – although if you see the Greatest Hits of Post-Coital Patty and the Braai Buddies on special, you heard it here first.) I’ve definitely known weirder; for example Sick-Bucket Simphiwe, who lived above me. Simphiwe a) vomited into my pot plants from time to time and b) periodically accused me of allowing strangers to park in his bay and harbouring the fugitives. “I’ll get those motherfuckers,” he would hiss on his witch-hunts, glaring at me through the windows. “And I’ll get you.”

Simphiwe, I should add, had a nasty habit of practising guitar at 1am (he only knew two chords) and watching TV so loudly that it would drown out my CD player even on its highest setting.

“You’re cramping my style, bitch,” he’d say amiably, when I asked him to turn it down.

Another intriguing gentleman in our complex was apparently already there when Sally lived there a good 10 years ago. This one drove a white bakkie, although drove is probably the wrong word, since I never actually saw him take it anywhere. He spent his days marooned on the roadside, fiddling with the aerial and peering anxiously at the sky.

“He’s trying to make contact with other life forms,” Sally explained when I asked her about it. “He’s convinced he’s going to get through any day now.”

Also fixing their gaze firmly on the heavens was the church choir on the other side of the building. Given who we were living with, I don’t blame them for needing a little gospel. They practised on Sunday evenings, which didn’t bother me so much; there’s something about singing at twilight that colours a building with a certain pathos.

“Give us a J!” one would cry as Drunk James drooled over the fence.

“Give us an E!” the next would warble over the bunny-chow-and-meths picnic.

“Give us an S!” another would holler as Simphiwe hurtled past, muttering.

“Give us a U!” the fifth would howl as chunks of beans splashed into the impatiens.

“Give us an S!” the last would trill as ET-Phone-Home hopefully twiddled his aerial.

“All together now: Who we gonna call?…JEEEE-SUS!”

Amen, sisters, I would think. We could probably use a blitz from a celestial clean-up crew. But I never said that bit out loud. It was my best shot at neighbourly love. DM

Photograph by Mike via Flickr.