Society and community

Hello, Fenwick Road

When I moved to Fenwick Road with my mum and my little sister, I decided that our neighbours were the least friendly people in the country. After six months I knew [1] ______ of their names. Not one. People hurried past with their heads down, and if I said good morning, they looked at me as if I had asked to borrow money. Then my sister, who was eight at the time, made a card for every house on the street, introducing herself and our dog, Biscuit. I was sure it would be embarrassing, but within a week eleven cards had come back through our letterbox. It turned out that most people on the street had simply been waiting for someone else to say hello first. Now we stop and talk whenever we meet, and my sister likes to say that the [2] ______ people you know, the less scary a new place feels.