Trust issues

I think the neighbours have gone on holidays. And they haven’t asked me to collect their mail. Do you think it’s because of this unfortunate incident (revealed in a blog called “I am so, so sorry” last January) …

“After dinner, everything fell apart. The neighbours knocked on the front door. They’d been away for a few days and wanted the mail I’d been collecting for them. Couldn’t find the effing mail anywhere. Last place I remembered seeing it was on the roof of my car, where I put it while I took the Sprogs’ hula hoops out of the boot, before driving Husband to work … I turned the house upside down in the vain hope it was there.

Finally, I went next door and confessed to having misplaced the mail, but promised to find it. Went home, summoned the energy to read a Dirty Berty book to the Sprogs. Previously had plans for jolly hijinks like tickling etc in bed. No longer had it in me. Relaxed, fun mummy gone. Replaced by frenzied, panicked mummy, wandering the streets, scrabbling through wheelie bins, lying on the road holding a torch under parked cars.

I found one soggy letter under a car down the street. I faced the horrible realisation I’d driven Husband to work with the neighours’ mail still piled on top of the car.

I will have to confess this morning. Or maybe I could just let them read about it on the blog? Dear Diane, I am sooooo sooooo sooooooooooo sorry, but I’ve accidentally scattered your mail to the four winds … No, that would be cowardly. I’ll take them a bottle of champagne and the one soggy letter I recovered. I will express deep remorse. They might forgive me, one day.”

Or not. It would appear not.

PS I must have looked in about 50 bins that night. And what surprised me was how pleasant they all smelled. Unlike ours, which verges on the gag-worthy, everyone else appears to scrub and deodorise theirs. I love the North Shore. So naice.

Have you ever screwed up with your neighbours?