We have been neighbours, acquaintances, friends for a long time. The family's daughter now living in Toronto with her husband, has two children of her own, of an age analogous to how old she and her brother were when we first met their parents. Our relationship has always been beyond cordial; concerned and interpersonal. We commiserate with their misfortunes, and congratulate them on incidents of good fortune. They communicate to us the highlights of their lives, and we reciprocate - to a degree.

She is open and friendly and he exceeds his wife's friendliness exhibiting a curiosity about others that appears at time to absorb him. He looks the same now as he did when we first met over two decades ago; frail, white-bearded and inquisitively probing of everyone in the neighbourhood. She looks different; young and vibrant with glistening black hair and an ethnically beautiful face; she has aged, face lined, with streaks of white in her glossy hair.

As long as we've known him he has been idle far more often than he has been gainfully employed. He hasn't worked a day in the last ten years, nor will he ever work again. Apart from the fact that he suffers from acute depression - not evident in casual contact - he has suffered incidents of physical incapacity necessitating operations which have left him more impaired than pre-surgery. He toddles about continually; she plods off to her full-time paid employment.

Their son is the most compliant, filial-respecting child imaginable, and now in his third year of university. Both parents are absorbed in the welfare and future prospects of their children. Somehow there is always sufficient funding for whatever the children require to aid them in their aspirations. Lately, my husband has avoided speaking with the father, though not with the mother or the children with whom relations remain beyond cordial.

One day last fall, while speaking with father and son, the father suddenly launched into an insulting diatribe against the son, a searingly humiliating scenario that played out in front of my husband who felt insulted on behalf of the son, who absorbed the abuse silently. A situation that led to my husband's epiphany that our neighbour was a bully and a tyrant, displaying inexcusable behaviour injurious to his son.

Soon afterward, in a display of jocularity not shared by my husband, an incident occurred that further cemented my husband's resolve to maintain a distance between himself and our long-time friend and neighbour. We had been slowly walking up the street, absorbed in conversation between us two, barely aware that a vehicle was creeping up behind us, when suddenly a loud horn blasted its way into our consciousness.

Behind the wheel of his car sat our neighbour and friend, splitting his sides laughing at our sudden alarm and discomfiture. I have since tried expostulating with my husband, to just let it go, forget it, put it behind us and resume normal communication with this neighbour, but my husband prefers not to. With the coming of spring and frequent opportunities to greet people exiting their homes in more pleasant weather the situation will become increasingly difficult.