My Neighbour Is Definitely a Wizard

I want to state up front that I am a rational person. I have a pension. I have opinions about tyre pressure.

But my neighbour Gerald is a wizard and I am prepared to defend this in court.

Exhibit A: the parking space.

There is one good space on our road. One. It is outside number 14, it is under the lime tree, and it is the only place on this street where your car does not get bombed by the pigeons that live in the church roof and hold, as far as I can tell, a personal grudge.

Gerald parks there every day.

I have tried everything. I have come home at four in the afternoon. I have come home at eleven at night. Once, and I am not proud of this, I moved my car there at six in the morning on a Sunday, and I sat in it for a while feeling triumphant, and when I came out after breakfast my car was in front of my own house and Gerald's Volvo was under the lime tree.

I did not move my car. I want to be very clear about that. I have the keys. They were in the bowl.

Exhibit B: the shed.

Gerald's shed is eight feet by six. I have measured it, from my side, with a tape measure, at night, which I understand is not the behaviour of a well man but which I stand by.

Last March, Gerald removed from that shed: a ride-on mower, a rowing boat, four sheets of plywood, a chest freezer, and a full-size mannequin dressed as a Roman centurion.

Then he put them all back.

Then he shut the door and it clicked, normally, the way a door clicks.

Exhibit C: the tomatoes.

It is not possible to grow tomatoes like that in this country. I have spoken to a man at the garden centre and he went quiet.

Exhibit D: the thing with the bins.

Everyone on this road has, at some point, forgotten the bins. It is the central tragedy of suburban life. You wake at 7:40 to the sound of the lorry and you run out in your dressing gown and you are eleven seconds too late and you have to live with the consequences for a fortnight.

Gerald has never once put his bins out.

They are always empty on Thursday.

Exhibit E.

Last week I finally said something. I had been building up to it for two years and what came out, over the fence, was: "Gerald, how do you get that parking space?"

And Gerald — who is seventy-eight, and wears the same green fleece in all weathers, and has a laugh like a drain unblocking — Gerald looked at me for a long moment.

Then he said: "I get up early."

Then he went inside.

Which is exactly, exactly, what a wizard would say.

I have started getting up early. It hasn't helped. But last Tuesday I found a tomato on my doorstep, enormous, still warm from somewhere, and I ate it standing at the kitchen sink, and I have to tell you it was the best thing I have ever eaten in my life.

I am no longer sure I want this investigated.