Pull together and don’t snitch on neighbours guilty of ‘mingling’ over ‘rule of six’ – Jayne Dowle

Priti Patel says she would be straight on the phone to the police if she spotted anyone smuggling in an extra grandparent for Sunday lunch.

Thankfully, her constituency is miles away in Witham, Essex. I hope we might practise a little more pragmatic common sense and decency in Yorkshire as the new coronavirus rules for social gatherings kick in.

My friend tells me of her own neighbour, who stopped her for a chat. This very respectable middle-aged lady said that when the time comes for Christmas family gatherings, if my friend didn’t tell, she wouldn’t.

I happen to know that this lady’s house is so generously-proportioned that she could fit four whole families into it and they wouldn’t be in breathing distance of each other. She’s hardly a freedom fighter in the model of Che Guevara, but I can definitely see her point.

The Government, with its customary tin ear for social nuance, has completely under-estimated the righteous anger of the Englishman (and woman) to do their own thing under their own roof.

There is something about this new policing of private space which strikes fear into most of us. And it’s not just within our own four walls. Ms Patel even told one interviewer that she would consider shopping two families of four who meet spontaneously in the street and exchange a few pleasantries.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, she made clear that, in her view, two families of four stopping for a chat is “absolutely mingling... mingling is people coming together. That is my definition of mingling”.

I’m sure the police have more pressing matters than having to define ‘‘mingling’’. And, as the chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales John Apter said, they need urgent guidance on how to interpret the new rules.

There’s clearly a disconnect here. Policing minister Kit Malthouse suggests that people should ring the non-emergency 101 number if they have concerns that their neighbours are breaching laws – but what if the person who answers the phone is unclear about what is still legal or not?

In the first month of lockdown, the public made 194,000 calls, many of them as trivial as people taking two runs a day. Most of these were never followed up. I’m wondering too if Mr Malthouse has ever had cause to ring the 101 number. If he had, he would know that the harassed officers on the end of the line were already stretched to capacity before coronavirus hit.

I know lots of people whose relationships with their neighbours are less than cordial. And I know too how destructive this can be to their peace of mind. Jane Austen, who knew a thing or two about human relations, warned about the ‘‘neighbourhood of voluntary spies’’ in the shires in her novel Northanger Abbey.

However, it’s one thing to be a curtain-twitcher, quite another to be so self-righteous and indignant that you would consider shopping your neighbour to the police. Hitherto, if a misdemeanour has been committed, most of us have managed to get by with passive-aggressive eye-rolling.

Clearly, public tolerance is key to good neighbourly relations, which in turn leads to kinder communities all round. Whatever happened to pulling together?

I shut the door when one dear neighbour, who has the most terrible taste in 1980s soft rock music, is mowing his lawn with the speakers on full blast.

And I’m the first out with a polite ‘‘please do you mind parking somewhere else?’’ plea when my neighbour’s son leaves his car in front of our house, causing an obstruction on the narrow pavement. I once had an irate man banging on my door swearing and shouting and blaming me because he couldn’t get past with his pram and dog.

I know that I annoy my neighbours with my occasional garden bonfires, but I always check they’ve taken their washing in before I light the match.

And yes, there has been the odd house party which has gone on to the small hours, but there won’t be any more of those for the foreseeable future. Or possibly, ever again.

I could live without a wall-shaking rendition of Don’t 
Look Back in Anger on New 
Year’s Eve if it meant that our country could get back to the life we once took so blithely for granted. My fear is that by pitching us all against each other, we never will.

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Thank you

James Mitchinson