A room with a view

The price we pay for treading the cultured cobbles of this little village is in square footage. We're less than five minutes from the Tube, a stone's throw from the Heath and wake up to birdsong, but swing a cat and it's going to get hurt. Our little pied a terre is one of many flats in what's optimistically described by estate agents as a mansion block (I always rather dreamed of owning a mansion, but if they all have communal areas like ours I'm not so sure).

Another mansion block snuggles up to ours and I've always felt they're a little too close for comfort. An elderly lady whose living room looks right into ours loves nothing better than sticking her head out of the window for an update on our goings-on several times a day, so we put down our blinds and live in permanent semi-darkness.

This was bad enough but recently things have got worse; a couple has moved in to a flat facing ours and one floor up which has the most tremendous view into our kitchen from theirs. The previous tenants must have been barristers or members of some other hard-working, non-cooking profession, but our new neighbours are in. A lot. And they cook. A lot. Try as I might to ignore her, I have caught girl neighbour's eye once or twice as I've been stirring my soup or chopping an onion. As good manners dictate, we both quickly looked away and pretended that the other wasn't there. Boy neighbour rarely cooks so this is good, but I am rather resentful of having to curb my very infrequent but sometimes entirely necessary naked trips to put the kettle on or sort out some tupperware. Last night I was to be found in pitch blackness, stumbling around trying to decant some leftovers without scalding something sensitive.

My boy, of course, is totally ignorant of the rules of modern living. It took him all of about twenty minutes to discover that there were some new and exciting people in his life. As soon as he goes into the kitchen he points at the window and checks if he has an audience. If he does, he waves. I turn my head and pretend I don't know we have company. If I acknowledge them, where will it end? Will we write bold messages on large pieces of paper? Work out a wiring system for lending cups of sugar or, more likely, brown rice? I will continue to ponder these questions as I put in an order for a new set of blinds.