Neighbourly Chat

We have known this chap for nearly twenty years, having met over drinks at another neighbour's place.  His partner and he have been shielding since February and he has only recently ventured out, and he looks much better for it.  We have been getting stuff from the shops for him, about once a week.

He told us today that he had just been for a drive; "Where to?" we asked.  "Well to Balmoral, but Phil was out so I couldn't have a chat."  It was his first drive in months so we forgave him his awful humour :-)

We were trying to converse across the street, but it was made doubly difficult by the almost constant stream of traffic; this is a B road so the A1 must be blocked, somehow, for drivers to be rat-running up this road.  The foliage was hanging off the back of a trailer: another neighbour is having his trees trimmed, thank goodness.  Three of them, ash trees, overhang our garden and dry the soil of the flowerbed.  Along with the huge acers in our garden, the lovely oak on the border of a the garden and these ash trees, there is a surfeit of entirely unsuitable trees around us.