LiF's new blogger, Rachel Parris, can't help but notice that she has new neighbours and can't help but get in touch with her trusty pen ...

Dear Neighbours (Sally, James),

WELCOME!
On behalf of myself, I would like to extend a warm welcome to you in your new home in Stockwell, we are now officially neighbours! At last! (Only joking – I haven’t been trying to make you move here over a period of years! Heck, I don’t even know you yet! You might be awful! Probably!)

PUBLIC HOUSES
This bit of Stockwell is a lovely area, with several pubs and a cornershop for every taste. You can go to the pub, or stand on the street all day, if you are unemployed enough. If you need a job, try being a barman – there are plentiful opportunities.

CRIME
You will find our street to be well defined by the phrase “wrong side of the tracks”, in as much as it lies directly between the picturesque Georgian square with private park where Will Self and Joanna Lumley live, and the sprawling and shadowy estate which has been noted in the national press for its gun and knife crime in recent years. You live nearer my end of the street – approx 2 metres from “Hell”! So we are both on the wrong side of the tracks! Yey! (Carry mace.)

ARTEM JONES
Just to warn you, the man who lives beneath me is a genuinely lovely and kind-hearted man, he just has an unusual sense of personal space and he’s quite cripplingly colour blind also. I might say, pre-emptively, that whatever he tells you about myself and my flatmate Caroline is not true! It is not true, and also, where’s the harm?! Where’s the harm, Sally and James?! Also, it’s not even true!

APOLOGY
I should, at this point, apologise if you were witness yesterday my dancing in front of our street-facing window, to David Guetta’s Titanium, while flourishing my flatmate Caroline’s new engagement ring of that metal, between some barbeque tongues. It was a low point, Sal, I can’t lie, but I’ll say this for that ring – you can throw it on a fire and it’s barely charred! That union is forever, if the ring is anything to go by, so good for them, Sally, good for them! I’m happy for them! I hope you are! Happy.

SOCIALISE
Sally (and James) do you watch Downton Abbey? I do! Perhaps we could watch it together! I’ve also got a box set of Catherine Cookson adaptations and all the new Sherlocks, so we could make a week of it – put our feet up! (See earlier caveat re unemployment – I know I am!)

CONCLUDING WELCOME
Anyway, welcome to the street – I’m sure you will settle in really soon! I’m sure Caroline will be sending you her own letter, although who knows these days, she might be busy satisfying her new fiancé, which I can tell you, gives me a warm glow.

Wish them the best, Sal!
Warm wishes,
Rachel xx