It was about 5 a.m. when I awoke out of a deep sleep. I don't know what woke me, but for some reason I decided to look out the window into my back garden. I was surprised to see some movement at the bottom of the garden next door. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and, yes, there was a person moving around among the shrubs. Was it a burglar sussing out the joint?
On closer inspection, I realised that it was my elderly neighbour pottering around near the hedge.
"Very strange behaviour," I thought to myself. Then again, it takes all kinds to make a world: we all have our little eccentricities.
I was too tired to watch for long or to try to rationalise this unusual behaviour. Maybe he was sleep-walking for all I knew.
A couple of days later I bumped into my elderly friend and as diplomatically as possible asked him had I seen him up early the other morning?
A little smile, almost of embarrassment, crossed his face. "Yes, I sometimes get up early and do that," he confided, shyly.
"Do what?", I asked.
Apparently, he was an enthusiastic bird watcher. And he didn't just watch birds, he liked to tape their song.
Collection of bird-song
Seeing I was fascinated, he opened up and proudly revealed that he had a marvellous collection of bird-song. There were all sorts of varieties of birds - some quite rare - collected on his cassettes and filed away. He loved to sit in his sitting-room and listen to them. He could recognise any bird by its song. Quite an achievement.
He explained that every garden had its own community of birds and they all lived together in harmony. They knew each other by their song. If a strange bird came in they would immediately know and be wary, or would want the interloper out: it didn't belong there.
Being a highly imaginative devil, I mischievously asked what would happen if I went off and got a tape of a few birds from a different garden and played it in his garden?
He laughed and replied: "You would cause chaos and it would be very upsetting for the birdlife. It's not to be recommended."
He was a very interesting old gentleman, very knowledgeable and very good company. You could learn a lot from him. In fact, one can learn a lot from most old people if one cares to listen; they have had long experience of life and have developed a certain natural wisdom.
My friend's knowledge of nature was phenomenal; he had a great feel for everything around him, his total environment. He knew how everything fitted into the great scheme of things. He was always calm and unhurried, totally at peace with his life and surroundings. He knew where he fitted in the great design.
I remember the day he and his wife moved in. He would have been in his early seventies. We had taken up residence six months earlier and we were wondering, naturally enough, who was going to live next door. We knew it was important to have good neighbours. It is essential to be able to get on with your neighbours. They can make or break your future.
Like all old people, they had accumulated a huge mountain of furniture and bric-a-brac. It took about three removal lorries to transport all their belongings. I can still hear one of the men fecking and blinding about all the stuff they had to unload. This included tons of books, tapes and gardening equipment. "It's a wonder he hasn't brought the trees from his last garden," the grumpy worker mumbled in my hearing range.
Ship-shape
They spent the first few days arranging their furniture. Two of their grown-up family arrived to help and then went away. Within a few days they were in ship-shape and well ensconced.
Then the old man started to wander around the large back garden. He casually picked up branches and twigs and bits of paper. A general tidy up. Then he had a big bonfire and suddenly the garden was clear of rubbish. He had this habit of getting things done effortlessly without hardly moving. When I was going through that phase I was in a lather of sweat and had strained my back.
Then he started doing something I couldn't understand. He began sticking down bamboo canes all over the garden in all sorts of peculiar spots. A few hours later he would pull them up and stick them down again in a different spot. Weird. I watched, fascinated. What was he up to. I couldn't fathom it out. He hardly expected the bamboos to grow, did he? Even me, with my then hopeless knowledge of gardening, knew that this just wasn't on.
A few days later, I had a chat with him across the back wall, in the best tradition of the gossip. After the usual pleasantries about the weather and the world situation, I brought up the subject of the bamboos.
"Oh, that's essential," he said. "It's planning."
Planning for what?
Rays of the sun
He said it was essential when developing a new garden to have good planning. The bamboos being moved around the garden indicated where the rays of the sun would be at a given time of the day. How far the rays would reach or how short they would fall. It told him where he could plant his shrubs, some in sunlight, some in shade. This was his fourth house and he had always planned his gardens that way.
Simple, when you think of it. But how many of us would have thought of it? Laying a simple lawn can fracture the brain of most of us in domesticated suburbia. My friend taught me a lot about gardening and many other things. He gave me a great interest in plants and nature. I'm very grateful to him for that. He helped with numerous hints and ideas when I was developing my plot. Without boasting, I can say that eventually I had a superb garden. Not quite as good as his; it couldn't be that good. But when I left that house over 20 years ago I got a few thousand pounds more for my place than anyone else selling at the time.
He was a lovely neighbour and it was a privilege to have known him.