A singing couple have moved in next door... Now what do I do?

In London, to survive, you have to pretend that you don’t live next door to people, but sometimes that’s impossible, writes Christine Manby

(Illustration by Tom Ford)

It feels as though there’s been a real shift in the atmosphere on my street this week. The builders are gone and the birds are back in the holm oak behind my house. If only my 15-year-old self might have known that one day I would be the kind of woman who writes Facebook posts about the return of the swifts and finds herself transported by the sound of a blackbird’s song. It fair makes my heart sing.

It’s not only birds and hearts that have been singing around here. I have new neighbours. They haven’t introduced themselves but I saw them moving in. They’re a straight couple, around my age, no children and no pets. Apart from what I could gather from brief glimpses as they directed the unloading of their furniture, the only other thing I know about them is that they like a good old sing-song.

I was writing a new press release for #Yne, the root-based non-alcoholic beverage that should be the basis of all your summer cocktails, when I first heard a snatch of “Three Little Maids from The Mikado”. I hadn’t heard that song for so many years, I thought I must have imagined it.