London life at close quarters

“What should I wear for breakfast?” isn’t a question many people ask themselves in the morning, unless they are staying at a hotel or going to eat out. However, for me, all journeys to the kitchen have become racked with doubt since moving to London.

The problem is that my kitchen is separated from my neighbours in the adjoining building by only a couple of metres across a courtyard. And when I wake in the morning, I can expect to find either a young mother preparing her children for school, a middle-aged couple poring over the Telegraph or a woman at her make-up table, depending on which floor in the building I look at.

As I am living alone, the company and distraction are often welcome. But the situation also raises questions about the etiquette of living in a built-up environment which, as someone from the rolling planes of Dublin city, I feel ill-equipped to answer.

In the beginning, as a keen-to-please new arrival, I was inclined to think that some sort of acknowledgement was required when I saw one of my neighbours across the way –a wave would be too much, but a smile or raised eyebrow perhaps. However, my fellow residents appeared uninterested in engaging me.

Despite their lack of reaction, I find it hard to believe that they don’t notice me a couple of feet away and aren’t in some way curious. I wonder, for example, what the reaction be if I turned up for breakfast one morning brandishing a bull whip and wearing a leather thong. Would the apparent obliviousness continue? I doubt it.

Even if they really are not interested in me, you have probably realised that I am quite curious about my neighbours. When the entire view from your kitchen window is filled by your neighbours’ homes, it seems ridiculous to pretend that they don’t exist. But sometimes when I find myself craning my neck so that I can better see the neighbour’s dog, I start to wonder if I have crossed a line.

In the porch on the way into my building, there are security guidelines warning people to make sure they shut the front door properly and don’t let strangers in. I only wish that somebody would pin a similar set of instructions to the notice board with advice along the lines of: “Residents in this building live at close quarters to their neighbours. Peering is natural and understandable, but outright gawking is not. We also ask that you refrain from making judgements about your neighbours based on the cleanliness of their kitchens or their appearance at eight o’clock in the morning…”

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