The local community website that is right up my street | Eva Wiseman

From lost dogs to wild garlic and the desperate need for a top tiler, nextdoor.co.uk lets you peak behind the curtains of your neighbours

A dog is roaming our street, barking away.” Every evening after brushing my teeth, I get into bed and explore my new neighbourhood. “Some people are now scared of coming out as they may be attacked. The dog is beige in colour.” To walk through nextdoor.co.uk at night is to map not just my local streets but its minds, minds that appear to flip fairly evenly between lost pets and new bathrooms, with regular loo breaks for paranoia. I love it. And what’s more, it makes me love them, love it, my new home, where Laughter Therapy is now available in the scout hut for the special price of £10, and foxes scream at night.

It’s a year since we moved in – we discovered this only when the house’s previous owner texted to say happy anniversary. I should have realised, the light is the same. There is this brightness that we didn’t get in the city, a lowness of sun that causes shadows the length of the M1. Walking to school in the morning takes twice as long as it should because my daughter wants to wait for the shadows to catch up. She’s just started in reception, but it doesn’t feel entirely new, as it’s the school that I went to, and my sister, and my dad – I keep waiting for the rush to come, the hit of nostalgia that will leave me gasping against a wall, but nothing yet. Everything is in place to make me cry – on her first day two weeks ago, each parent was sent away with a small plastic bag, inside which was a teabag, a toffee, a poem and a tissue, for the tears. The equivalent of, having scratched you with a nail, offering a little sachet of salt for the wound. Still I didn’t cry.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2NeczUW