Random acts of neighbourly kindness

[HaveringWavering]

As an antidote to all the Neighbours from Hell threads on here, I thought I’d share a story from the other side of the coin.

Yesterday I opened the door at about 3pm to a young guy in his twenties who said “Bit of a weird one this…”
“Uh oh” I thought, “What charity does he want me to sign up for?”
“I’ve just been putting sticky numbers on my bin and I have a 3 and a 6 left over that I don’t need, since you are number 36 I wondered if you’d like them?”

I can’t say I had ever given much thought to putting numbers on my bin but I appreciated the gesture and we then had a lovely chat. He’d lived 5 doors down for 2 years and we had never previously set eyes on one another.

This was in London too, so perhaps will ho some way to dispel the stereotype of London being an unfriendly place where neighbours never speak to one another.

What random acts of kindness have your neighbours done for you?

Lovely idea for a thread. I number my bins because one was stolen a few years ago

Our neighbours are ace. We've done all sorts for eachother over the years but a couple that stand out:

• Back when I was a single mum, I found an enormous spider on my landing one evening. I am ok with small spiders but it was truly huge. I knocked on my neighbour's door and she came round and removed it for me.

• I was on my own and had a horrible sickness bug. I wasn't keeping down water and couldn't stand. I couldn't get hold of anyone on the phone. I summoned up all my strength and crawled down the stairs, with many stops for being sick, and made it to my neighbour's door. They found me collapsed on their doorstep, called an ambulance and made sure I was ok. They then came down with the bug I had

• DS had just started secondary school and was a bit useless with the house key. He got home one evening when I'd taken DD to her swimming lesson and couldn't get in. He knocked next door for help and they let him in in seconds.

Oh dear. Not many nice neighbour stories about it seems. Yet I have two. As well as Bin Number Neighbour, the other day I got back from the school run to realise I had picked up the wrong keys. DH was working from the office that day. Fortunately I knew the back door was open and my lovely neighbour climbed over the fence from his garden to let me in. That wasn’t exactly random, in that I had to go and ask him nicely to do it, but he did it with good grace and even gave me a coffee. Only after he let me into my house did he reveal he’s been partying till 4am (it was 8:30) and I’d got him out of bed . We have done all sorts for him before though, including the same rescue in the opposite direction!