The folk from Wood Street*

*not its real name, but I wouldn't want anyone doing a search and getting upset.

When I can't sleep, which for some bonkers reason I couldn't last night despite being verrrrryyyy tired, I take familiar journeys in my head. One of my favourites is wandering round the house I grew up in, looking into all the cupboards and finding out which memories are clear and which are a little blurry, or just don't make sense. We lived there for 16 years, so the things I remember are a strange mix of being a kid and being a teenager.

Last night I decided instead to visit some of the neighbours.

We lived at number 154. Next door at 156 were June and Jim. They were there when we moved in in 1973, and still live there as far as I know.

They were a bit older than my parents and they had two kids who were both older than me and my sister. Jimmy was a lot older, he didn't live there. He got married and his wife was a beautician who worked out of their flat. That might have been because they had a baby. Anyway, I had my first leg wax on their sofa when I was about 15. It cost a fiver. I think my mum paid, she never was keen on body hair.

Lesley was June and Jim's daughter, she was about five years older than me. Before she left primary school she used to walk me to school and home again, without showing any deep embarrassment. She was nice.

She used to babysit us when she got a bit older, and she was crazy about Sting. I didn't get it myself, but then I was quite a late developer. She had a boyfriend called Johnny who went to my school. He was a little wild, I approved of him. She also had a friend who died of cancer, I remember her crying in the drive.

She came round to babysit once before she went out with him. She must have been about 17 and was wearing an alarming early 80s outfit with brown and black dogtooth tapered trousers, black patent heels, a creamy shiny blouse and a silky cravat-style scarf with a cream and brown pattern on it. And a big flick, and a lot of lip gloss. She must have spent hours getting ready.

She said 'I probably don't look very nice'. I remember thinking, boys do strange things to girls if they make them look like that. I said no, not very. I hope she wasn't offended, I didn't mean to be rude, I was just baffled and not very tactful.

I was a bit more tactful a few years later when I was called out into the front garden by my mother. Lesley had split up with Johnny and had been going out with Fran for a couple of years. Fran was a bit wet, I thought, but I was probably 17 myself by this stage. Lesley was crying and showing my mum an engagement ring. I remembered to smile and congratulate her, but inside I was thinking 'you can't possibly want to get married already!'

But she did. They are very happy as far as I know.

I can't remember much about June and Jim, except they had knocked through their kitchen and dining room into one huge room. Oh, and Jim used to work for Wilkinson Sword, because once he brought home two pairs of left handed scissors for me. I always used them with my right hand, because I had never had left handed scissors before, and they dug in.

Then he retired, or was he made redundant, and he started driving a taxi. His son used to drive it too. Occasionally I used to get a taxi home from my Saturday job at the bread shop (it was about a mile, but there were days my feet just hurt too much to walk) and it was always deeply embarrassing if it was one of them at the taxi rank. He also told my mum once that he'd seen me eating chips by the war memorial. I was incensed, because it was a cheese and onion pie.

And then there was the time my parents were away and I had some people over. It was all very tame, in fact we watched The Killing Fields on video and cried. I don't think anyone had sex anywhere or anything. Nonetheless, Jim reported to my parents that there had been a yellow Capri in the driveway until 1.45 am.

Neighbourhood Watch, I said. Neighbourhood Spy, more like.

joella