The Good Neighbours

“So, where’s me brew,” asks The Neighbour before swinging up and between the rails, contorting his body around the boards of the 16 foot scaffolding tower. The Neighbour is not only very tall, he is also very kind. And so is The Neighbour’s Wife. They had offered to lend us the scaffolding to paint the walls and ceiling in what will be our new living room.

The day before I was due to clean the beams, they took the scaffolding down from outside their own barn, loaded it into a trailer, drove it to our barn, unloaded it and then reassembled it.

And then they watched my shaky, rubbery legs pathetically try to push my unwilling body up and along it.

I finally got to the top, white knuckles gripping the handrail, trying not to look down. They looked at each other and then at me.

“What time do you want us here?”

The condition was that we made The Neighbour lots of tea, although we all knew there were no electrics and no kettle.

So he stood beside me as I cleaned down the ancient oak beams with my father’s old wire brush. Together we rubbed away centuries of dirt; breathed in centuries of dust turned black with age.

And as we worked, The Neighbour whistled the theme tune from Animal Magic. After a while I was able to look down without my knees buckling.

Of course there were other beams, higher up.

To reach them, The Neighbour, who now confided that he ‘hated heights’, stood on the handrail, steadying himself with one hand on the ceiling. And it must have felt pretty high up for someone, who at 6ft 2, already has eyes a long way from his feet, even on solid ground.

The Neighbour’s Wife and I watched as the tower swayed ever so slightly when he brushed away the dirt.

While he was up there he decided to start ‘cutting in’ the walls and ceiling. Paintbrush in hand, he said the Pale Mortake Cream looked very nice from where he was (almost) standing. The Neighbour’s Wife sat below him on a scaffolding board wielding a roller.

When we returned the following day, the walls and ceiling were a smooth symphony of cream-greige; a perfectly painted backdrop for the once-again handsome beams.

Thank you seems too small a way to say we’re forever grateful to The Neighbour and his wife; not just for the way they rescued me from the scaffolding, but for their friendship, kindness and support in the few short months since we arrived in France.

This summer The Neighbour and his wife will be re-roofing their barn. And theirs is a lot higher and a lot wider than ours. I’m with them all the way.

But I still can’t get the theme from Animal Magic out of my head.