The Moving Times Of Caroline Proudly

42 St Philips Road

The official dining room was to be my bedroom. Jacki and Rachael would have one of the double rooms each and their friend, Laura, would have the small bedroom. The four of us went along to 42 Saint Philips Road to ensure that everyone was happy with the arrangements and the rent that I was going to be charging. With just the finishing touches to be done and the carpeting to go down, we were all delighted with the prospect of moving in to our new, central home. The date was set, and everyone handed in a months' notice. The move created great excitement and the fact the beds had not been delivered as requested, didn't dampen anyone's spirits. As I was unable to get the central heating to work, that first night the four of us slept huddled together under duvets on the sitting room floor. The next morning, I called the gas company to complain but rather than change the account to my name they had in fact cut me off. To my embarrassment I was informed that everything was in order, but that as the house was on a pay as use metre, I would not get any gas if I didn't buy the keys that gave me the credit. I went out for gas 'keys' and got back to find the beds being dumped on the pavement outside the front door of number 42. Apparently, that was as far as the delivery man could go, as their insurance didn't cover them to take the beds into the house. Getting them from the doorstep to the bedrooms was my problem. A problem indeed it was but the four of us did it after a lot of pushing, pulling and swearing accompaniment.

On the deeds of 42 Saint Philips Road, it's address was Hedgley, but as that was Hullen's red light district, and the house was at the end of the road, I tended to think of it more as the acceptable Hollow Ridge. My first trip to the far end of Saint Philips Road was to stock up on basics. As I sped around the aisles of the pile'em high, flog'em cheap Aldi, I couldn't help but notice that it seemed that many of the female customers seemed to be using the same strategy for marketing their personal wears. Large breasts, which without the help of visible red or black straps winching them up would have hung at waist level, were standard. Low cut tops in black stretchy fabric with a high Nylon content, which inadequately covered what they were supposed to, seemed to be the uniform. Blindly throwing industrial sized packs of loo roll, kitchen roll, cling film and foil into my trolley, I tried to focus on the cheap stilettos that clipped past. At the checkout I studied in wonder the mops of peroxided hair scraped up into back combed wobbling towers and tried to get over the shock of the experience by convincing myself that maybe I was being exposed to a certain look rather than surrounded by actual hookers. My Aldi runs were not that frequent but were always as fascinating as that first time.

From day one, my tenants and I tried, in vain, to ignore the noises that came through the wall from the neighbours on one side. On and off all day you could hear the loud groaning that after about an hour finally reached a blood curdling high-pitched scream before it went back to eerie groaning again. The mysterious sounds and the constantly closed curtains of the house next-door created sinister hypotheses about what actually went on inside. One afternoon, when I had turned the volume of the TV up several times but could still hear the groaning over the top, I was driven to confront the situation. As I stood on the doorstep of number 40, waiting for someone to come to the door, I rehearsed my diplomatic phrases. A man in his late 70's or possibly early 80's, wearing a tired sports jacket and horrible checked trousers cautiously open the door a crack and greeted me with, 'I've seen you coming and going. You've just moved in next door. I suppose you've come about Janet's noise. I'll tell her to try and keep it down.' With that, he slammed the door in my face. He was true to his word. As I let myself back into number 42 above her audible groaning, I heard him shout, 'Janet, try to keep it down. You're upsetting people again with your racket.'

Not long after that, in a more pleasant situation, I met the neighbour on the other side. Sue had just popped around to introduce herself and say that if we needed anything to give her a shout. Caught off guard by her visit, I momentarily forgot my manners and we stood on the doorstep chatting in the cold. Having gone to the trouble to be neighbourly I invited her in and over a cup of tea, I benefited from her years of living in at number 44. 'Janet' and her father had lived at number 40 for an eternity. The story was that about 30 years before, suddenly Janet had gone from being a normal teenager to a harmless but very noisy nutter. Her condition had one of those 'funny medical' names but Sue couldn't remember what it was and the way she saw it was that a nutter was a nutter, whatever name they used. Two doors down was Betty, a lovely old widower, who took pride in her garden and loved a quick chat over the garden fence when she was hanging out her washing. Three doors downs were some students, a nice enough lot but who occasionally played their music a bit louder than was necessary. On the opposite side of the road were a couple more pensioners, a plumber and nurse married to an electrician. Last but not least, there was Happy Old Harry and his dog 'Lady', whose garden met mine running the other way. On the practical side, Mr Petal's corner shop was open from 7am 'til 9pm, the Chinese next to it was locally known for the high quality of its number 12 and 45 dishes but it was better to go further afield if you fancied chips. With regards to parking, the traffic wardens religiously ticketed on Wednesdays and Fridays, but for the rest of the week, illegal parking was perfectly safe. Realising that the only area she hadn't covered was herself, she added that she was a divorcee, with one grown up son who was married with 2 kids and lived in Blackstone, and her teenage daughter lived with her. With her precise run down of the immediate vicinity completed and supper to get ready, she hurried off.