Derek is our next door neighbour. He is a caricature cross between a smutty carry-on character from the 1970’s and a depressive who focuses on the absolute worst in his life. And shares it with us at every opportunity.
Derek will try and piss on our day before it has even started, waiting outside his house until he hears our door latch opening – he’ll then limp up to my front gate, wheezing, groaning a feeble ‘good morning’ – waiting to be asked ‘how he is’ – big mistake. I have learned not to ask. Over the five years we have lived next door, Derek has had type 1 and 2 diabetes, 2 heart attacks, angina, bowel cancer, kidney failure and ‘chronic pneumonia’.
The only thing worse than being his next-door neighbour would be being his Doctor. If that were me, I’d leave him in the waiting room , hoping he’d expire in a pool of his own self-obsessed misery.
Of course, Derek seeks attention. Derek is lonely. He has no friends and since he is wife of 25 years left, he lives alone. I suspect he doesn’t get a dog or a cat as a pet because they’d disappear, next seen paw raised in a desperate bid to hitch-hike back to the shelter.
We met on our move-in day, a happy occasion for us after six months in a rented hutch the size of a lift. Derek was standing, leaning on our gate, preventing me from carrying boxes inside, wheezing and looking at me through tear -stained red eyes. Not knowing better at this first meet, I introduced myself and stood an listened for 15 minutes whilst he regaled me with the story of how his wife had left him, he didn’t see any of his 4 kids (who can blame them) and nobody cared how ill he was.
How sad I thought. Poor guy. He seems so ill. Ten minutes later I got in the car to nip to the local shop which is a very steep hill away – to pass Derek striding out up the hill looking twenty years younger, oblivious to the sob-story he’d just bestowed on me. He was following a buxom middle-aged woman up the hill, trying to start a conversation as she cowered and ignored him, stretching her legs to leave him behind..
Either Derek had a twin brother or here was somebody with serious truth issues.
And so it has been ever since.