I cam home a few nights ago to find three of my neighbours (housemates) standing outside our front door. There was Mr Xiu, who lives under my kitchen. He’s a kind of caretaker who fixes things when they go wrong. Well, he has an arm and a leg which don’t work so shuffles around the place and has to ask the caretaker from the next house to come and do any tricky things like change fuses for him. But he’s nice and friendly and always greets me with a smile and chats.
Then there was the man who lives under my stairs. I hadn’t though this strange until someone came to visit from the UK and said “There’s someone living under your stairs!”. Then it occurred to me that it was odd. But anyway, he’s very nice although I’ve never known his name. he always has his door open – I suppose because it’s a pretty small space and claustrophobic. Whenever I walk up the stairs in the winter I get a lungful of second hand cigarette smoke coming out of his extractor fan into my face!
And the third man is the one who lives under my bedroom and he’s the one who bangs on the ceiling with a pole every time I walk across the bedroom floor with what he considers too much enthusiasm. I don’t like him much – he has shouted at me several times and is often grumpy. Anyway I make a point of smiling at him and chatting to him in a jovial way hoping it will piss him off. Every time I see him I ask him is he’s happy today. He smiles but he probably hates me!
Anyway we were all standing outside the front door, the three of them chatting, smoking and spitting and me taking in the night air and the sounds of the lane. Then out of nowhere came a crashing sound as something came through the trees and landed on the floor. I thought maybe it was a kitten – there are plenty of them in the community at the moment. But then I could see a bag of rubbish lying on the ground. Someone from the fourth floor had lobbed it out of the window because they couldn’t be bothered to walk down and put it in the bins.
They know that a cleaner comes around at 6am every morning and picks it all up. I was pleased to see my neighbours also look in horror and one of them even shouted up to the offending window. Nothing happened of course and most days when I leave the house there are bags of rubbish on the ground. If you ever wondered what it would have been like to have lived in Medieval England, just come to a Shanghai lane!