I imagine that many of you grew up like me with the idea that it’s good to be interacting lots with the people who live and work around you.
“Neighbours, everybody needs good neighbours.”
“Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came” 
“I’ll be there for you when the rain starts to pour, …like I’ve been there before.”
Soaps and sitcoms are always really popular TV shows. But are these kinds of relationships reflected in current communities in the UK? How many of you know the names, jobs, pastimes of the people that live around you. I recently moved into a block of flats with every intention of getting to know the people that lived around me. But after initial introductions with a couple of people I crossed paths with whilst unloading stuff from the car, there haven’t been many conversations since.
Sadly we live in a time and culture where people keep themselves to themselves, perhaps many are even afraid of the people that live near them because they don’t know anything about them. With most of us having nearby shops open at all sorts of times there isn’t the need to go to the neighbour to borrow sugar or coffee any more! Most interactions with neighbours are brief as we run from one place to the next.
Some friends of mine recently threw a street party. They got permission to close the road off and filled the street with furniture, food and fun activities for the children. I was inspired again as I heard stories of different people who had lived on that street for years only just getting to know each other.
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So my tip for this month is as much for myself as for any of you. To find new and creative ways to get to know the people around you. That might be neighbours, that might be people at your local pub or the gym. (I guess the easiest place to start is to find out a little bit more about the people at work who sit near you… but I know so many of you are already really good at that.)
Why bother? Because I think most of us do genuinely envy the communities that we see in a lot of TV programmes (even if we wouldn’t necessarily want their traumatic life experiences or comical dilemmas).
