Forty-One People and a Bin Day

There are forty-one people in the message group for Pelham Road, and hardly any of them have ever met.

Most of the messages are about bins. The day changes at Christmas, and every year somebody asks, and every year eleven neighbours answer at once, including two who moved out of the district in 2023.

A few are about cars. An orange van parks across a drive, a photo appears, and the van is gone in ten minutes. Nobody ever finds out whose it was.

Cats come up more often than children. A cat called Marmalade has been lost four times and has come home four times on his own, and the group heard about all eight.

Then there are the fireworks. Somebody sets them off in October at eleven at night. Everybody complains. Nobody admits it.

And every March the same man sells the same sofa. It has been “nearly new” for three years.

In three years the group has carried one message that mattered. A woman on the top floor of the block fell in her kitchen and couldn’t get up, but her phone was in her pocket. She typed one line to the group. Four residents were at her door in six minutes, and one of them had a key.

Hardly anybody on Pelham Road reads all of it. Nobody leaves it either.