{"id":6022,"date":"2006-07-09T10:21:45","date_gmt":"2006-07-09T10:21:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.grayblog.co.uk\/2006\/07\/on-breaking-the-ice\/"},"modified":"2006-07-09T10:21:45","modified_gmt":"2006-07-09T10:21:45","slug":"on-breaking-the-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/2006\/07\/09\/on-breaking-the-ice\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking the ice with a spade"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Want to break the ice with your neighbours? Found that they don&#8217;t generally say hello or give you the time of day? Don&#8217;t want to have a reputation as the secretive soul in your street? Then dig a hole!<\/p>\n<p>Yes, my amazing discovery of the week is that digging a hole in your front garden is the perfect way to get to know your neighbours and far easier to organise than some sort of party or barbeque. I&#8217;m currently working on the front garden, swapping the turfed area with the parking area so that the cars are not parked right by the front door (sounds easy, doesn&#8217;t it? &#8211; I estimate a completion date some time in September, particularly as rain is precluding any digging activity today), and as I&#8217;m working various neighbours have stopped by our gate and called out such pearls as:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>that looks like hard work<\/li>\n<li>how big are you going to make that hole?<\/li>\n<li>it&#8217;s a bit hot for digging<\/li>\n<li>when will it be finished?<\/li>\n<li>why don&#8217;t you use a digger?<\/li>\n<li>found anything interesting?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The usual suspects have been more-than-usually friendly, but I&#8217;ve also had brief, hole-oriented conversations with neighbours who have been strangers for the first eighteen months that we&#8217;ve lived here.<\/p>\n<p>So, why not give it a try? Report back in the comments on the conversations that you have as a result of wielding a spade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Want to break the ice with your neighbours? Found that they don&#8217;t generally say hello or give you the time of day? Don&#8217;t want to have a reputation as the secretive soul in your street? Then dig a hole! Yes, my amazing discovery of the week is that digging a hole in your front garden [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home-and-garden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6022\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}