The noisy neighbours of Nunhead

David and I met in Nunhead this morning to do a spot of gardening for a very sweet lady who is no stranger to GoodGymmers, as she also has a Coach runner who comes to visit. Her garden was rather nice and had been well looked after, so ours was a manicuring job for the most part…

Well into her nineties, our host’s mobility wasn’t so good any more, but it was really impressive to see how her memory was still pin-sharp. Despite no longer being able to access her garden shed or utility cupboard herself, she still had a precise mental map of their contents, and was able to effortlessly guide us to where all the things we needed were without even leaving her chair.

No sooner had we arrived and come outside than a local cat had seen an opening and was sizing-up coming into the house presumably to pilfer itself some breakfast. David spotted it in time and we shut the door to keep it out. As beautiful and friendly as it was, it looked like it may have had one too many breakfasts in it’s time already. It’s plan thwarted, it disappeared off into the garden next door... Through the fence and shrubs you could see a rather bourgeois garden there with chickens clucking and some pretty luxurious seating and accoutrement – a Judi Dench-looking woman was coming and going into it. All of this would be unexceptional if after 10 minutes or so, she hadn’t started playing music at a volume that could have woken the dead - it wasn’t a hi-fi, she must have had a PA system in the house. Consequently David and my conversation about his Coach running, and the upcoming B10K aid station was brought to an unexpected end as you would need to yell to be heard over it. We were scandalised that someone who lived next to a really sweet house-bound old lady would shake the paint off the walls like that, but was heartened that when I brought it up with her, our host seemed completely unphased by it, what a legend!!

Since she now walks with a frame, she’s not confident to go exploring in her garden these days, but hopefully after our efforts today she’ll be more content with what she can see from the back door.