17/06/2026
Sunday’s plans with my boys were spectacularly interrupted by another impromptu episode of Dexter at my elderly neighbour’s. No makers fair, no eco house nosy with the Boy as planned.
D is my neighbour. He’s also my landlord. And for years he was my client.
I can see the look of confusion on your faces. How can he be all those things? How does it work? Is it weird?
I met him 9 years ago, I became his gardener. We worked together in the garden a lot. We’re very similar. Hoarders, plant obsessed, have our own funny little ways. I recognised a kindred spirit, another person not quite oblivious of their ‘differences’.
It took years for him to relinquish control of the plants, but gradually he’s saw how much I loved his garden. He was a dab hand with a long-handled axe until just a couple of years ago. And as he’s aged to 82, he’s given me permission to make the decisions.
We’ve even fallen out a couple of times. But we understand each other.
In a way, he’s what I imagine it must be like to have a dad at this stage in life.
When his tenants left 6 years ago, he offered us the house, next door to his own home.
So he became our landlord, along with Chrissie, his wife. Chrissie knew I understood him, snd we shared good-natured eye rolls & sneaky rose-pruning plans behind his back.
And here, we were able to rebuild the hut and create a garden with beds, a pond and sheds.
It’s a place that has never felt more like home.
When Chrissie died, we had the honour, Bear and I, to help David ready and bury her. And yes, I do mean literally. I filled in the grave in their woodland burial site, one shovel at a time. It was the best funeral I’d ever been to.
As his neighbour, I have a key to his house, he has a key to ours. Which has become so blatantly important as he’s aged so much in the last two years.
Today, I’ve spent from 9 until now, 18:20 in A&E, both Bear & I having cleared up the aftermath of his emergency - the Dexter-alike scenes that have greeted up both yesterday and today. Old skin and veins can be so fragile.
It’s been tiring, long and hot here. But he needed me, and here we are.
I’ve had many unusual experiences in my middle-of-the-road life.
The identities I’ve had, the lives I’ve lived, the things I’ve felt, seen and done: they all make up this person who sees life as an adventure.
Precisely BECAUSE of these things.
Nothing earth-shattering. Just unusual and varied.
And I’ll continue to look for the unusual and the varied in my life. Because that’s now who I am - and it’s what I want.
Just like my relationship with D, interesting and convoluted , I am a person of interesting and convoluted aspirations.
My therapeutic work is my purpose in life: it’s what my soul came here for.
Creativity is essential for my mental wealth: beauty in ritual and expression.
Variety, however I find it, is important: small adventures, big dreams.
We all have parts of us we ignore, put aside, don’t credit enough for how they drive us.
The most important thing I want you to know, is that allowing all your parts to be players on your stage is how you make yourself whole
