They're not the original owners of the house next to ours, but they have lived there for two decades, which is as long as we've known them as neighbours. And as neighbours one couldn't hope for friendlier people, easy to live alongside, quite unlike the previous occupants. There is a distance to their friendliness, but we don't mind that one bit. Good-natured onversations are as frequent as we see one another. We watched their two very young children grow up into likeable, responsible adults. And we appreciate the warmth however removed, that we share between us.

Oddly enough it is a warmth and a friendliness carefully meted out it would seem, since it doesn't appear that they have any neighbourly relations whatever with other people living on the street. True, they both work full-time, or as full-time as can be said for federal civil servants who take advantage of all the possible days-off and early-in-the-day leaving the office as can be squeezed out of the system; a fairly system-wide occurrence as far as I could see, myself once working for the federal government with ample opportunity to observe the process in play.

They have invested heavily in their home, in every sense conceivable. Over the years they have signed contracts with any number of home improvement firms, from the installation of an in-ground swimming pool, to the conversion of their floors from carpeting to wood, the make-over of their kitchen and the installation of ceramic flooring. (Most household changes we have ourselves engaged in, with my husband being both contractor and worker on his own behalf.) And on the exterior, on a number of occasions bringing in contractors to lay patio bricks, and once to construct a three-season 'cottage' onto the back of the house which turned out to be virtually unusable as it became a 'hot-box' in the summer months and a cold-storage freezer in the winter months.

But it is their home and they love it. And they also adorn it constantly. Around the pool they have placed faux palm trees and deer and rabbit statuary of colourful plastic. At Hallowe'en time they rush about transforming the front lawn into a hodge-podge of fright, complete with auditory back-up. As soon as that holiday has passed, gradually out comes all the stored and newly-purchased ornaments for the lawn, from Disney-type characters to more traditional reindeer and Santa pieces, most of which become half-buried in the snow as winds bury them through the winter months. A colourful display, however, and one that appears to please them mightily.

The flashing lights and the ornaments are not confined to the front of the house. The backyard is festooned with lights and similar ornaments are displayed there as well. So while they proudly display their affection for the Christmas holiday spirit at the front of the house, the back is never neglected. They may be invested in creating the most 'spectacular' display on the street for Christmas, since most other households either satisfy themselves with tastefully discreet and still notable lights draped here and there on trees and shrubs, or have none at all, only glimpses of bulb-lit trees visible through night-time windows.

In this, as in all other matters that people engage in, with public displays, to each his/her own.