My neighbour is lurking and crouching, vested and ready. Listening out for snatches of gossip fodder. I catch glimpses of him through the shrubbery. His dog yelping, his radio crackling on. Every now and again, the blasts of his electric drill and the shuffle of his croc'd feet on his driveway gravel.
Over the back, glasses are clinking, and a man is telling a story in an elevated tone. Next door, coming and going with the frequency of a boomerang, hia parents might be recently passed, but he is not in the neighbourhood gossip network so nobody is sure; they are absent that much is clear. Off the beat of the techno music he plays he takes puffs of his perma-cigarette. Married to observation, i take a breath so deep that I swear that I feel it in the soles of my feet and take a sip of my now cold tea.