A Friendly Eye.

After I had written the peice regarding the travellers that used to pass through the village, someone pointed out that some of these, and the milkmen, postmen, and paper deliverers who used to come around the doors, were all part of an informal network of people who could, in the course of their work, keep a friendly eye on the older or more vunerable members of the community. They also often provided a friendly and trusted face, perhaps the only person that the lonely or isolated might see during the day. In the old days, you rarely, if ever, heard of people lying dead behind their doors for weeks on end, partly because of closer family links and closer relationships with neighbours but also because of the network of friendly tradespeople who kept a watch on their customers.

Now we live in an age where the milk delivery service is becoming more and more restricted, Newspapers are bought less and less and rarely delivered and postpeople have to work to ever tighter shedules and have less time for a friendly chat. In addition, people are afraid that the knock at the door might not be your friendly milkman but some criminal planning to relieve you of your posessions and so it becomes easier, even with the watch kept on the vunerable by medical professionals and social workers for people to retreat from the world and for tragedies to happen.

The days of the friendly eye are sadly missed.