How well do you know your Neighbours?

freshpopcorn

The sad case about the English couple in Tipperary made me think if this. Some people online are being a bit harsh on the the people the area in my opinion.

I live on a country road with about 8 houses and some businesses.

I know most of my neighbours to see, by name, what they do, etc and most of the road in similar. However we'd never call into one another for tea/coffee. We'd all have family and friends visiting tough.

I do know of some people tough who really keep to themselves. They've often fallen out with family and friends in my experience.

Count Dracula

I have heard many a story about rural Ireland being harsh and 2 faced with "Blow ins" and people not from " The Parish". The reality is that community can often be as toxic to inter community relationships as it can facilitate and nurture a healthy environment to habitat. Irish people are naturally begrudging and far too competitive, even with their neighbours.

To keep my comment fair I also respect that many people who choose to live in isolated or small environments are quite often seeking a higher level of privacy and seclusion that they find elsewhere. That involves making sacrifices on how your neighbours are going to be friendly or socially cooperative with you. More often than not they are seeking the same level of privacy. Apart from any 4th or 5th generations locals... they are just painful bores who reckon they own the place and have the right to pass comment on anything that moves next door. Phuck them for starters.

Montage of Feck

I've made peace with the fact that my putrid cat eaten corpse won't be found for a considerable amount of time due to my lack of family and introvert personality. :)

odyssey06

I haven't really watched Neighbours much since the 90s. Seems like I'm not alone, as it is about to be cancelled. Might check in on the finale, I hear Kylie is back.

* This is AH after all...

Gant21

Covid and Eamonn Ryan have alot to answer for.

Leg End Reject

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119253656#Comment_119253656

That's a stretch now in fairness. It seems their neighbours assumed they'd gone back to the UK because they'd told their neighbours they were returning.

It took 18 months for a neighbour to see their 2 cars around the back of the house so he must have gone in for a nose about if no one else spotted the cars.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119253656#Comment_119253656

Did Eamonn kill them personally or did he just order the hit?

Mrs OBumble

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119253656#Comment_119253656

And country people were nice to English blow-ins before that? Yeah ....

nokpam

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119255661#Comment_119255661

Anyone who blew in was ok. The dudes who barged in though were never terribly welcome. They'd be about as welcome now as the dogs and the Irish in London.

nokpam

you'd never like to see a fella stuck, but ya wouldn't want him to outstay his welcome.

John_Rambo

I live urban in Dublin. Very mixed neighbourhood in age & background, elderly are looked after, people keep an eye on them, even the ones that don't really want to be part of the community.

Awful news from Tip, the couple that didn't talk to anyone ever but told everyone they were moving to France or back to the UK.

dorothylives

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119253560#Comment_119253560

You should get a cat flap. It's only fair to the cat, I mean there's only so much decomposed human flesh they can eat before they start fancying a tin of Whiskas.

Dempo1

I'm fascinated with the Impression of Rural folk looking out for neighbours and impressions of community spirit etc.

The case involving the Couple in Tipp is very tragic on many fronts but I'll say this, I'm suprised not a single person called to the property, even from a welfare check point of view, the lady appears to have had an illness, was there post building up, what about utility companies and most strange aspect is that no one seems to have noticed the car. I'm not making any judgements but this is by no means the first time this has happened in a rural property.

I'm from Dublin but moved to very rural Laois 21 years ago. I did sense a friendlier atmosphere in the first few years but gradually people, locally became more insular, kept to themselves, why I cant explain but certainly its more pronounced since Covid.

I live alone, reasonably friendly and always attempt to be helpful when called upon but I made a conscious decision very early on not to mingle, the "friendly neighbourhood set" as I like to call them were actually only truly interested in my business, nothing more, nothing less, shallow in a sense.

Most of my personal friends live in different counties or abroad, I'd of course be known in the village but as the Dub who owns the quirky cottage, I'm an enigma to locals in a sense and that suits me perfectly, I actually had Dreadlocks when I first arrived and can only imagine what locals thought of me 😂

If a total stranger came up to me outside my cottage and asked were so and so lived, I'd not have a clue, whilst very rural there's a cluster of houses near me and despite being in my cottage 21 years, I could actually not tell anyone the names of those who live in those houses.

I could go weeks without a caller to my home and those that do are not local or neighbours. This in part is my own decision and approach and I'd had often been away for months on end working abroad or working away from home.

Of course I communicate with the outside world, Phone, email Zoom etc but rarely locally.

I think society in general has changed dramatically, Rural Ireland is absolutely not the utopian, cuddly neighbourly world people sometimes think it is.

Would I swap it to move back to an urban location , not on your nelly, I live in the Slieve Bloom mountains and have all the company and fabulous scenery I need 😏

Mad_maxx

Locals in rural Ireland have a rule

Unless you can claim three generations buried in the local graveyard, you are a blow in

Furze99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119255841#Comment_119255841

"I'm suprised not a single person called to the property, even from a welfare check point of view, the lady appears to have had an illness, was there post building up, what about utility companies and most strange aspect is that no one seems to have noticed the car."

It is all very puzzling - whatever about Covid and people wanting privacy, there was almost certainly the occasional letter/ bill being delivered and meters to be read etc. Surely anybody calling by must have seen the growth of weeds, build up of post and car parked up.

Furze99

As to OP, we live in a rural area, not in our neighbours pockets but they'd notice soon enough if anything was amiss.

John_Rambo

They allegedly paid someone to mow the lawn, paid cash up front and told him to mow until the money ran out.

Doesn't sound plausible, probably a convenient bar stool story.

FlubberJones

Lived rurally for years, neighbours were nosey f*ckers that were constantly interested in what everyone else was doing, working, earning or how much land they had....

Moved to Dublin, know the neighbours as much as I say good morning to them... this is it and it is far better

Mad_maxx

Once you are a blow in ,at all times you must be available and willing to answer every question no matter how personal, otherwise you will get a name of being " awkward "

The same does not apply in reverse, should you ask any question to a native, it will cause the local to tighten up

endacl

I know the first names of my neighbours in the house on the right, but not their kids. Pretty sure of the name of the husband on the other side. Other half’s brother has a house across the road. I know him.

Here 17 years.

Wezz

Okay now but took a while. We are both blow ins and foreigners at that. Some people had no interest in getting to know us and some still won’t even say hello. Most are fine with us now but I don’t think it will ever progress beyond a casual thing. It really sure why.

Bobblehats

Very well, Willy is doing my lawn I put my back out. Good fella.

BattleCorp

I rode a couple of them years ago so I'd know those ones fairly well.

dorothylives

I'd know a few to make brief casual conversation with. I could put names to a lot of faces who've been here for years. There's a few new arrivals I could narrow down to maybe India or Pakistan, no idea really, they keep to themselves. There's nobody in the immediate neighbourhood who lives alone or who'd be considered vulnerable and I'd say that it would be noticed fairly quickly if people who should be around weren't seen for a while.

Leg End Reject

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119257190#Comment_119257190

Nobody called as they kept themselves to themselves. They had also told the locals they were moving away and had made arrangements for the grass to be cut for a while. The cars were around the back of the house so the neighbour who spotted them had to have been looking around the house.

It's very odd as they might have been set to move and both died unexpectedly, or they might have wanted it to look like they'd left. It's sad either way, but their neighbours aren't to blame for them being undiscovered for so long. People have a right to live isolated from their community if they want.

Buddy and Pal.

John_Rambo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119258003#Comment_119258003

I think the whole grass cutting arrangements was a spoof to shine a sympathetic light on the community.

Leg End Reject

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119258718#Comment_119258718

The community must be very insecure if they felt they needed to do that.

Sorolla

I bought a lovely house in the west of Ireland 25 years ago.

i used it as a holiday home and tried and tried to get to know the neighbors with absolutely no success.

I spent many a summer there and would have been working around the house doing whatever repairs were necessary and I would nod and greet anyone that passed by the house.

I am 100% sure if I fell of the roof and died out of sight at the back of the house - not one of the neighbours would notice.

Anyway, when Irish Water was sending out the letters many years ago - I noticed I did not get any correspondance and then it dawned on me that very little mail was delivered to the house.

I went to the local shop(which also housed the local post office) to enquire why very little mail was being delivered to the house.

The auld buck working at the post office basically told me my life story - told me who I was and who my father and grandfather were.

He knew what I did for a living and where I lived and who my spouce was and how many children I had.

He couldn`t explain why mail was going "missing".

Anyway I complained a lot about this.

The auld buck in the post office was the local postmaster, local shopkeeper, local undertaker, local publican, local county councillor.

A short time later I got a letter delivered to my home address advising me that my property was in direlection and if some measures were not untertaken the property would go onto the dereliction list.

There are a lot of really bad looking properties in this locality and they received nothing.

Only one property was threathened with the dereliction list.

Make of that what you will.

Sorolla

If the gardai make a "welfare check" on a property - they may have to "break into" the property.

Who pays for the damage to the locks if the property is empty?

Do they leave a note for the house owner so that when they return to the property they will know that the house was "broken into" but it was part of a "welfare check"

Beatty69

I live in rural Ireland but I'm from Dublin originally so do go up there every so often. I know if I was to go missing no-one around here would raise an alarm because they would presume I'm gone to Dublin, that's fair enough though.

At the same time, if my car was still outside I would hope someone would raise the alarm soon enough but honestly I wouldn't be completely sure that it would be because I keep myself to myself and the locals don't particularly like that because they don't know my every detail. Sad really that people can't care for their neighbours unless they know all their business.

John_Rambo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119258769#Comment_119258769

Look, you can't blame them, scrambling for excuses & reasons for ignoring their neighbours lying stone dead in their house for almost two years. Scuttlebutt ensues. You have to wonder why one of the sadly deceased didn't contact anyone after the other had died. It can't be ignored that the departed didn't exactly help themselves.

Whatever way you look at it, it's not good for the community that this happened. According to locals they didn't talk to anyone yet there's plenty of anecdotal (and a letter) to prove that they talked to people about leaving for France or the UK. So there was communication. The Gardai have a case to answer to too, they rented a fleet of cars to check up on elderly during Covid and I witnessed this happening in my locality.

Montage of Feck

It funny that the same rural TD's who are always bemoaning the decline of rural Ireland are the ones you go to get planning for one off housing.

The car centric linear development one off house means that we are living in our own little isolated bubbles.

Stranger Things

Have a weird past time where I try find the houses of crimes or things like this on Google maps and street view. Found the house and noticed it’s not that rural. Yes it’s a rural area but it’s on a road with houses beside it and neighbours actually seen chatting on the road. (Also quite sad seeing the street view pic from 2011 of the house looking lovely and then the Google maps picture from 2021 i believe). Think it’s poor from the neighbours as it’s closer proximity than worded on these news articles. Probably shouldn’t speculate but I reckon the husband passed and the wife followed taking hers. Think this will be the last we hear of it though. Doubt the area needs this story continuing. RIP

dorothylives

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119259747#Comment_119259747

I'd forgotten about the Gardai doing those welfare checks on the elderly during COVID. I don't know how I forgot as it kept popping up in my Social Media all the time with photos of Guards and the elderly. I can understand the rush to say the couple kept to themselves and that they said they were going back to England. But there would have been lights on in the house. Surely they would have had to do a food shop or collect medicines from the Chemist. Something doesn't add up. If they hadn't left and were doing those things then they'd have been seen out and about.

JupiterKid

Very sad case - but as others opined here, it's surprising and fortunate that there weren't more of these deaths with the Covid pandemic and more and more people living in isolation from neighbours, family and friends.

You increasingly hear reports in the news of people living alone and having no contact with family or friends and being found weeks, months and even years after their death. When I was a young kid back in the 1980s in suburban Dublin most neighbours in my housing estate knew each other and looked out for each other and their kids. It was pretty close-knit and as kids we were always in each others' houses. There were a minority of neighbours who kept to themselves but these were the exception to the rule. These days, the estate I grew up in has high walls and gates around most of the houses and very few people living there now know their immediate neighbours, let alone talk to them or even wave to each other. Very sad IMO. 😥

I myself live in an apartment complex with my partner in inner suburban Dublin and despite apartments being well-known for lacking neighbourly spirit, I know four of my immediate neighbours very well - we all look out for each other and we are key holders for two of our neighbours, as they are are key holders of our place. The fact that we are all owner-occupiers and that I'm on the management committee almost certainly is a factor. My neighbours who are tenants renting their places - most of them foreign nationals - are all in their 20s and 30s and I admit that I do not know them at all.

My immediate next door neighbour is an elderly lady in her late 70s who has become frail in recent years - I and two other neighbours keep an eye on her and check if there is anything she might need from time to time. It's good to be a good neighbour. 😊

I am well aware that some people are very private and not everyone wants to be social with their neighbours - and this is fine up to a point - but it seems to me that in the West there is a general atomisation of society occurring which has been facilitated by communications technology and the internet. People do not need to mix anywhere near as much as in the past to purchase groceries or go to work as they can do these things from home. It also seems that family - and keeping in touch with them - is much less important to people as it once was, and many people are truly loners. The Covid pandemic and attendant lockdowns almost certainly exacerbated this atomisation process.

Family - and keeping in regular touch with them - is still very important for many (if not most) people in Ireland but if you look at the UK or the USA they have gone a lot further down the road of societal atomisation and on a UK message board I check in with from time to time, many of the regular posters live on their own, have little or no contact with family and I suspect that many of them are also very lonely.

BaywatchHQ

I know them but not to talk to, I will give you an example. I was at a football match in Dublin at the weekend and I saw an old primary school friend of mine. I haven't seen him for over 12 years. We live only half a mile from each other yet I had to travel 2 and a half hours to see him. Unless you are involved in the GAA club then there is a good chance you won't see many of your neighbours from one decade to the next. That is partially because I am a recluse but even if I wasn't a recluse I still wouldn't see most of the neighbours as there isn't a social hub in the area outside of the GAA club.

Gregor Samsa

I know mine well enough to have absolutely nothing to do with them.

John_Rambo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119263034#Comment_119263034

Oh no. Don't like the sound of this.

whisky_galore

Know some of them, although not in the friendly calling in for tea way.

Place next door is a rental house, current people are lovely, quiet and keep mainly to themselves. The crowd before were a nightmare...or to be specific the man of the house was a nightmare. A foreign national, fond of the sauce, picked fights, shouted at his wife a lot. Couldn't/wouldn't control their dogs either. Moved out when he lost his job for not showing up and hitting the vodka too hard. Good riddance.

BattleCorp

My mother lives in a terraced house. She's getting quite elderly and if she doesn't pull the curtains back in the morning, the neighbours will call in to see if she's ok.

She sometimes gets up, pulls the curtains and goes back to bed.

She stayed in my house for two weeks while she was getting work done on the house and before she left, she had to go around and tell the neighbours that she was staying with me for a while. If she didn't do that, they'd be worried about her.

My Mam wouldn't move if she won the Euromillions, all because of her neighbours.

Strumms

been here a while and know them all, wouldn’t be calling in for tea / coffee but if you needed a dig out or visa versa no issues. Through covid that was notable and another issue.

The only issue is with a lad who likes to do DIY till the AM, in the garden or garage… he does furniture projects and work on his vintage vehicle and either looses track of time or doesn’t care, … don’t know him well enough to speculate…

he is fortunately ex directory as I’d planned on compromising his ability to sleep when he was going a bit loco with the above… talking 1.15 am..

billyhead

I know my neighbours on both sides of the road. I would be available to help them with anything and always say hello and stop for a chat when it suits me but that's the height of it. I wouldn't be calling into there house or vice versa for a drink.

asdfg87

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119262966#Comment_119262966

Sure wouldn't you see them at mass or confessions, we're all sinners i am told.