My Neighbours Have Declared War On Ordinary Doorbells

I have always believed a neighbourhood is a collection of people who agree not to hear each other putting out the bins. Lower Wombley has decided this was insufficiently ambitious. My neighbours formed the Committee for Advanced Courteousness, whose first meeting ran for three days because nobody could settle whether waving counted as a low-level announcement.

The trouble started with Marnie Quill, committee chair and holder of the recently created post of Deputy Minister for Front Gardens. She ruled that ordinary doorbells were emotionally confusing. A visitor, she said, should not press a button before choosing from twelve approved moods: Hopeful, Mildly Damp, Prepared To Explain The Parcel, and the rest of them.

I raised a practical objection. My front step already contains a boot scraper, two suspicious pebbles and a small plaque informing delivery workers that I am not currently accepting riddles. Marnie brought a laminated chart. It assigned my household Cautious Hospitality: three short chimes, then a pause in which the visitor considers the moral consequences of knocking.

“I cannot endorse the crunching.” — Tibbles, the communal announcement goose, via the Office of Avian Public Relations

The chart settled nothing.

Orrin Pask, the street’s volunteer Coordinator of Unnecessary Atmosphere, installed a weather vane that points at whichever house complained most recently. It points at mine. He says this is meteorological rather than hostile. On a calm afternoon, I watched it turn indoors. Either it has an exceptional sensitivity to criticism or Orrin has misunderstood architecture.

Then came Tibbles. The committee introduced him as a communal announcement goose, although he is painted wood and stands on a pedestal beside the recycling bins. Each morning, a notice appears beside him with his views on late-night footsteps. Yesterday’s notice read, “I cannot endorse the crunching.” The statement was attributed to Tibbles by the Office of Avian Public Relations, which consists of a folding chair and has declined further questions.

That chair now has duties.

I miss the old arrangement, when neighbours settled small disagreements by slipping a note under the wrong door. Every dispute now needs a subcommittee, a ceremonial bell, and an independent panel of three retired scarecrows. Last Thursday, they summoned me for failing to acknowledge a hedge. I said I had been looking at the pavement. The panel found me technically innocent, though spiritually evasive.

There is, reluctantly, some comfort in all this. We disagree about bells and hedges. We have yet to settle whether a goose can issue guidance. But everyone on this street knows nobody is behaving normally, which at least saves time.

I have submitted my own proposal: future neighbourhood decisions should arrive by carrier pigeon, provided the pigeon has completed the correct form. Tibbles objected. I am treating that as progress.