How well do you know your Neighbours?

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.