Silly question? Not at all. I know quite a few ‘cases’ where somebody took umbrage, and could not, would not, make amends. Sometimes a whole family could be involved, if it was neighbours. No treaty was ever drawn up, and only death or moving made for peace. Currently it is, I am afraid political. Most of the world, and quite a lot of America, are asking ‘What IS the war with Iran all about, and when will it end? As both sides are pig-headed and neither want to lose ‘face’ stalemate sets in.

I had a lonely childhood, and only writing this has clarified some of the reasons. We lived in a small row of houses, built on part of a field which had road frontage. My father’s sister and her husband were the first to build, then a second bungalow, then us. So my father and his sister must have spoken together at some time, to have moved out of London. I never remember the two households communicating, and my memory goes back to about three years old. Awful memory, standing with horrified neighbours, as my second cousin, perhaps 18 months, was drowned in the fishpond, that tiny body carried out under a sheet, police in attendance. I really liked my Uncle Joe, Dad’s brother in law, but Auntie Elsie was a virago and a malicious gossip. I did have clandestine conversations with the next door neighbours, and the wife was very kind to me as a teen-ager. My father built our bungalow with the window of ‘my’ bedroom facing the path from their front gate. It did not overlook any windows, but they claimed ‘Ancient Lights’ and put up the equivalent of a huge cricket screen, so I never had any light.

The other side was a family with three children, the father never talked to anybody, the children had no friends, I, an only child, never played with them. The mother did talk to me when nobody was looking.

Two doors up was a very unpopular man who did not go to war, he was young, dug his garden, worked, carried his solid daughter. We took their bread in, and I would take it along. They had a very aggressive terrier, he took quite a lump out of my calf, and my father made them have it put down, so they never spoke again. We were ‘set apart’, my father being in business, the rest of the village ‘working class’ and a couple of men who got rich through the war, and I was the only one to go to Grammar School.

The worst was marriage break up. Mr G’s brother split with his first wife, he treated her shabbily but Mr G had to stay loyal. His ex-wife never spoke to us again, just because we had the same name. I tried to send messages via her daughter when she was dying of cancer, no way. My mother, also separated, carried her bitterness to the grave, even blaming me! Can you, have you, managed to ‘Kiss and Make Up?

The Gardener

A Moodscope member