Are you still reeling from news that Neighbours is due to finish its 37 year run this summer? Certainly for those of us who remember the heydays of the Oz soap – Ah, Scott and Charlene, now that was a vedding - the fact Ramsey Street is facing its Waterloo offers a pinch of nostalgia.
Setting aside its role in launching Kylie into the stratosphere, one of the great attractions of Neighbours was its idyllic slant on cul-de-sac life. For here was a community in microcosm. One where everybody knows your name – and usually your business – but where, ultimately, warmth and support endured for the collective good.
It`s not true of every cul-de-sac, of course. (Bodies under the patio, Brookside fans?) Yet, in my experience of spending 26 years living in one of these so-called dead end streets in north Manchester, the benefits have been fathomless. Because there's nothing like a Jewish cul-de-sac
Take the fact that at the bulb end of our particular stretch, all the houses are occupied by those who keep shabbat (a pragmatic observation rather than spiritual comment). And so once a week, save for the owner of an errant sat nav device, our road is entirely car free. Children play outside and the hazardous occupation much loved of Jews – walking in the middle of the road on shabbat – can be observed with gusto. G'day is supplanted by Good Shabbos as we create our own kibbutz-style atmosphere.
But living here has immensely enhanced my life on so many levels. Not for us the blink-and-you-miss-it acknowledgement which inevitably hallmarks busy lives. We dawdle to chat as we decant the supermarket shop from the car. And it's not unusual for the group to grow as others, on seeing there are people idling by the gate post, come over to join in. As such we don't just know our neighbours - we really know our neighbours (and that's why neighbours become good friends - sorry).
There's always someone to leave the keys with when you go on holiday, borrow eggs from if you've run out and you fancy whipping up a quick kugel. In times of happiness or sorrow, they are there. Rallying, supporting, cheerleading.
What's more, you can measure out the passing of time through the rhythms of your neighbours. I know we're on the countdown to pesach thanks to some premature fish frying which goes on in the open garage of one neighbour. The rich oniony smell of generations of Jewish fress wafts over the entire street as she works away from her impromptu pesach trestle table.
We've had so many lovely ties with our neighbours. Sitting on the wall when the kids were younger and played on their bikes. Organising street parties for the Golden and Diamond Jubilee (Jewish style, the booze went largely untouched due to the Jewish preoccupation with the midweek work headache. But those Tupperware boxes of home made goodies were picked clean.)
The cul-de-sac really came into its own during the pandemic. In the early days when restrictions were at their worst, but the weather was sunny, we would sit on our respective walls or bring chairs to the bottom of our paths (we don't do drives in my corner of the world) and slake our thirst for human connectivity. Then, as the days darkened and shuls remained closed, my husband and I invested in a fire pit.
On Friday evenings we would light it at the bottom of our path – not drive – before Shabbat came in. And as modest flames licked the evening sky, neighbours came out from their front doors – each bearing their own dram of something cheeky to toast the fact we'd made it through another week of the madness.
Now the Neighbours TV show is being shunted off the schedules perhaps there's scope for a new Jewish soap. Tales of Fire Pits and Fried Fish, anyone?. Meanwhile I realise that in living in my little Jewish cul-de-sac, I'm very blessed. I hope you should be so lucky (lucky lucky lucky) to live in one too.
