The Man at Number 6 Meets Constantine Cavafy

Cavafy by Lorenzo Mattotti 

The New Yorker (March 16, 2009)

My next-door neighbour - the man at number 6 - came from another land, across another sea. He did so, presumably, in the expectation of finding another city - a better city - in which to make a home and raise a family. 

He's ended up, however, here on Harold Hill and living in a two-up, two-down former council house; which must feel cramped when you not only have a wife and two young children, but your in-laws and a dog to accommodate. 

And so, he's decided to singlehandedly rebuild the house; extend the kitchen, convert the loft, add a front porch and a new drive, etc. This has meant two years of drilling, hammering, and cement mixing; i.e., two years of noise and dust and having to look out onto what was once a pleasantly overgrown back garden but is now a building site-cum-rubbish dump: Wherever I direct my gaze, the ruins are all I see.

I suppose, if it makes him happy to spend all his free time toiling away and aspiring towards not only a bigger and better home, but a bigger and better life, that's really up to him. Personally, I have no such desire or ambition and don't hope for elsewhere. I'm tempted to tell him that no matter what improvements he makes to the house he remains the man at number 6, with the same wife, kids, and in-laws:

'Tis the same streets in which he'll walk the dog. 
The same district in which he'll grow old;
and inside the same house he'll turn grey. 

Ultimately, if within your own small corner you can't learn to be content, then you'll never be happy anywhere in the world ...

See: C. P. Cavafy, 'The City', Collected Poems, trans. Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, (Princeton University Press, 1975): click here. 

Obviously, I'm riffing on this poem in this post and sampling lines from it. Readers should note, however, that I relied upon a new translation of the work by Maria Thanassa (2020) and not the one to which I link here.

Reflections on the Death of a Rat

SA 2016

When exiled in Essex looking after an elderly parent in need of extensive and intensive care due to a serious neuro-cognitive impairment, it can quickly become isolating: friends fall away and family members stay away. And it's virtually impossible of course to communicate with the natives, or get to know the next door neighbours. 

And so, like Dr Doolittle, one turns to the animals for companionship; whistling to the little birds, observing the slugs and snails in all their soft beauty, and attempting to befriend a very timid but rather fierce looking local cat who likes to sit under a big bush at the top of my back garden, disappearing through a hole in the fence whenever he's approached. 

I've been leaving him a small tin of Gourmet Gold chicken and liver chunks in gravy at night for several weeks now, which, judging by the emptiness of the tin each morning, he seems to enjoy. Indeed, in what I like to interpret as a gesture of gratitude the cat today left a freshly killed (and semi-eaten) rat on the lawn for me to find.       

Now I know that many people find such feline behaviour gross, or might raise a moral objection to cruelty (it's amazing how many self-professed animal lovers are in denial about the murderous and carnivorous nature of reality). But I must admit to feeling rather touched by this attempt to reciprocate kindness and share food.     

I understand that domestic cats have an effect on wildlife numbers, killing many millions of birds, rodents, and other small creatures each year. However - and this might surprise many readers - there is no scientific evidence that predation by moggies is having any serious impact on other species here in the UK.

What the research does show, however, is that rapid loss of natural habitat due to human activity is the major factor in why biodiversity is shrinking; over 60% of British species have significantly declined in recent decades and 10% face extinction. And it's we - not our pets - who are to blame ...