love your neighbour

With my brilliant intermediate students we've been lately meditating on the complexity of social issues in Great Britain, or - tu put it clear - on the problems with neighbours that you might encounter when living there. In order to fully realize why the British may freak out in relations with their neighbours, you should have a look at a typical street in Luton, near London:

What you see is a row of terraced houses, of a cookie-cutter type, where you might easily mistake somebody else's door for your own, as they do not differ much. When you look a bit closer, you'll find out in addition that the space between each two doors is really tiny. No wonder that when you come up with the idea to leave your garbage outside your door, your neighbour will treat it as a treacherous attempt on his life, or at least - as a health hazard.

Here the door is even more visible behind my back. Another striking fact is that the floor of a terraced house is on the level of the pavement, which gives the impression of actually living on the street.

Still, for me, those red Siamese houses have that wonderful air of the "Britishness" - provided that I can just walk along, disregarding the matters of noisy neighbouhood.

PS I request my students not to use my photo for the purpose of voo-doo practices - no matter how angry with me they might get:)

love your neighbour - miłuj bliźniego swego / kochaj swojego sąsiada (neighbour - 1. sąsiad, 2. bibl bliźni)

encounter - napotkać

terraced house - segment zabudowy szeregowej

cookie-cutter - foremka do ciastek; tu: sztampowy, na jedno kopyto

tiny=very little

treacherous - podstępny

attempt (on) - zamach na

pavement - chodnik

Siamese - syjamski

provided that - pod warunkiem, ze

disregard - nie zwazać na coś