So many people are not interested in anyone but themselves and their small coterie of friends.
With so many single person households now, many, many people will pass away in their homes and no one will know.
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Sadly, thatâs a lot of peopleâs nightmare but it does happen again and again.
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I must be living on a different planet⊠
I live in a Cul-de-Sac with ten houses. Three of us have been here since the street was first built 50 years ago, we all look out for each other including the new recruits who have been here for several years, even our new next door neighbour who moved here last year has fit in nicely.
We can regularly be found leaning against one anothers gate having a nag.
We had a street party for the Queens 90th birthday, and back in the day I had several metres of cement dumped against my gate for a new garage base (the driver dropped it off on the cheap at the end of his shift) Before I could say âJack Robinsonâ they all turned up equipped with a wheelbarrow and shovel to help me transport it down my long drive and lay the base.
My neighbour mowed my lawns following my heart attack, and I mowed his during his hospital stay. Most of us are retired now but I take care of all the electrical emergencies, and the bloke across the road supplies us all with vegetables that he grows in the greenhouse of a disabled neighbour who can no longer use it.
If anyone goes to hospital or are ill, we all muck in and do their shopping and tend their gardens.
The whole village has a great community spirit which radiates a lot further than our Cul-de-SacâŠ
âBrigadoonâ springs to mindâŠ
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There is a basic reason for this. In the UK these days, if you help someone they might mug you, stab you or turn out to be a confidence trickster etc. Itâs a question of trust.
Some people are lucky and live in safe areas where they know all their neighbours and help each other. Others fear for their lives when they leave the house. If someone is overly helpful many people would wonder what they are after. We live in a world that is overpopulated and someone always seems to want something. Rather than just being kind. Of course not everyone is like this and there are so many good people around, but sometimes itâs difficult to know who to trust so people keep themselves to themselves.
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Last Sunday I was in my local town going up some steep steps .
An old chap who looked every bit of 105 years old but was a probably only 99 was coming down them .
He has a stick could barely walk and was clinging in to the rail . I asked him politely if he was ok intending to offer my arm to help him down
His answer was â you are the sixth person to ask me that and I was rude to the others but I wonât be rude to you â
Right , I hopped it .
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Like a lot of things, looking back seems rosier than it was. In the past, people needed to rely on each other in the neighborhood because they might need something right away their neighbor had or could help with.
Now there are 24 hour convenience stores and home delivery for most things. YouTube shows how to fix a lot of things.
Because of the dependence on others for help, people put up with a lot too. Nosey neighbors. Loud neighbors. Drunk neighbors. Even violent neighbors. Everyone had to get along. Some people are less willing to do that anymore.
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Iâd have helped you down those steps in a whisker MuddyâŠWait a minute!.. 
Have I got it the wrong way round?
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Quite. You could watch that very transition in slow motion over here after the shortage economy that forced people to try and build a tighter social network, which was designed for the long term, had disappeared. And yes, a lot of compromises had to be made which would have been unacceptable under normal circumstances. Yet some folks still hang on to that kind of social romanticism believing that it was due to a different kind of people or was deemed to be an advantage of the old system.
Such a network went further than having a chat over the garden fence, helping each other out, or taking in parcels for neighbours which is what you find in almost any neighbourhood.
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Absolutely Butterscotch 
Us Londoners arenât very comfortable with too much bonhomieâŠâŠ
A stranger says good morning to me and I think âwhat the hell do you want?â or âare you a psycho, please donât kill meâ 
Itâs great to be part of a community that help each other, of course it is
But a lot of people used to get excluded from those communities for being âdifferentâ and there was a lot of nosiness and judging and pressure to conform
My mum fled a small country town to come to London at 16 and she never looked back
âBloody nosy, small minded lot, you couldnât change your drawers without them knowingâŠâŠâ
Beware of looking back with rose tinted cataract replacement lens
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Our perspective of what life was like in the âgood old daysâ varies greatly from person to person. It also varies with location, ie Country, County, City, town village, or hamlet.
I can only speak for my particular location, and the way Iâve seen my community change over the years, and some of the reasons for those changesâŠ
In the first instance, or at least when I started to take notice, everything seemed hunky dorey. Mum worked in the local Meadow Dairy shop, and Dad worked down the pit. Just about everybodyâs Dad worked down the pit. We would catch the bus each Saturday and visit the local town (Doncaster) for all the things you couldnât buy in the village. The local bobby lived in the village and he knew everybody. He was well respected and knew where to go if something went missing.
All the blokes drank in the local pubs and clubs, and some of the wives were members of clubs like the womens institute and were all friendsâŠGossips yes, but still friends.
The church was almost full on Sundayâs where once again, nearly all of the community met and asked God to forgive them for the sins they had committed during the week.
The first change came when some people could afford their own transport, and now they could leave the village each morning to work at the many industries that were in abundance around Doncaster. Dad was one of them, who, due to injury, left the pit, bought a car and went to work for a large glass bottle manufacturer where he later retired with a good pension.
The community was no longer as close as it was, some people didnât work at the pit anymore and didnât drink in the pubs. The council estate that we left soon decayed, nobody looked after their gardens anymore, and neighbours battled with each other.
Then the pit closedâŠIt devastated the community, shops and pubs closed, people left the village to find work elsewhere. The pit supported many businesses which then closed leaving many unemployed. All over South Yorkshire pits closed and left behind whole communities with no work and poverty. Some of the villages became âno goâ areas with crime and violence on a massive scale. There are still areas in some villages that remain dangerous to this dayâŠ
SorryâŠI digress⊠
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Thatâs as good as it gets these days DachsâŠ
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Sure and that should suffice in normal times. But itâs also reassuring to observe how mutual assistance increases immediately in emergency situations provided a critical mass of people is affected.
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I just think I donât belong in this alien world anymore, itâs not what Iâve always known . I always looked out for neighbours and friends . Nipping to the shop Iâd call out to my elderly neighbour do you need anything? I found another neighbour dead in her bed , Iâd called in on the Saturday she wasnât well , called again the Monday and found her snuggled up and passed away . But over the years new people come in , at one time attached to me new neighbours from hell , awful people, made me feel unwell . Luckily a better lot moved in . I now go to the car and keep my eyes lowered, some will wave when I smile hello , some turn away . My immediate attached neighbour walked past me by 3ft when I was bending down weeding in the front garden , he would have seen me whereas I didnât see him till he put his key in the door, then and only then did he mumble something after I looked up and said hello.
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We tolerate it from a homesick aussie ⊠Gâday mate, howyagoin, mouth is drier than a dead dingoâs donga, need a tinny, fair dinkum, good on ya ⊠mate
And thatâs where to draw the line, hang around longer and youâll get the ten pound pommie sales pitch: best country in the world mate.
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I think what I was getting at, was that people used to congregate more DachsâŠIt made for a friendly community.
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Ha Ha You could have helped me up them Foxy they are really steep I was puffing as if Iâd run a Marathon.
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I take your point, Bob.
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Steps make brilliant training Muddy and I just canât resist running up them, although I donât know what Iâm training for these daysâŠ
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You might feel worse if you didnât train .
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Absolutely Dachs, I think once you lose that drive itâs time to get out the jigsawsâŠ
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