Danny Katz: The one thing missing in our modern cities

This is a sad story about an old guy named Vinno. He lived all alone in the house next door, and he was a wrinkly, bearded man with a strange, crusty skin condition. 

If he was out gardening in his front yard, it was hard to tell him apart from the trees. Vinno was the tree in the saggy trackie pants. But that’s not the sad bit of the story, I’m pacing myself. It gets a lot sadder.

Vinno and I lived in a pair of worker’s cottages, which is kind of ridiculous because neither of us were doing much work. Vinno just hung around all day, napping or drinking beer or standing on his porch, watching the world go by, holding up his trackie pants using nothing but his prehensile buttock cleavage. 

And I just hung around all day, trying to kickstart my career as a filmmaker/musician/writer, but I was in my mid-20s and finding it impossible to commit to having talent in any of those things. 

Still not the sad bit. It’s coming. I’m building to something.

Our two non-working worker’s cottages shared a wall, so everyday at exactly 12:15pm, I heard Vinno’s lunchtime routine. A skreeeek as he dragged a chair to his kitchen table. A pfffffttt as he cracked open a tinnie of his lunch-food. And a clickkkk as he pressed play on his cassette player and listened to The Three Tenors sing Nessun Dorma.   

He pumped it up pretty loud: sometimes I felt like banging on the wall and yelling “Oi Vinno! Some of us are trying to work here! I’ve got arts grants I need to think about applying for! Turn it down!” (The sad bit is almost here. I may have built it up too much. Sorry).

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Have you ever wondered about who lives next door? Photo: Stocksy

One day at 12:15 pm, there was no skreeeek, no pfffffttt, no Nessun Dorma, and I thought “Hmmm, I hope Vinno’s okay”. Then I just went back to my work – choosing an eye-catching font for the title-page of a screenplay I hadn’t written yet, and didn’t even have a title for. 

Turns out, Vinno wasn’t okay: he died that day, alone in his home. Sad bit! Told you we’d get there. We did it. Phew.

Years later I was watching a TV doco hosted by that Kevin McCloud guy from Grand Designs: the one with the pompous voice and the fancy clothes and the dirty old sneakers to show he has the common touch. Kevin was visiting the slums of Mumbai and explaining how even though people lived in terrible poverty, they had a tremendous sense of community. They looked out for each other, checked on neighbours, shared each other’s lives. Which made me think of old Vinno: how maybe I could’ve saved his life that day – maybe I should’ve checked on him instead of faffing around with fonts.

Something is missing in our modern cities: we live close together but we couldn’t be further apart. And we need to look out for our old neighbours; share our lives with them, share meals with them, share everything. Except strange crusty skin conditions. They can hang onto that.