Several years ago I lived next door to...

Several years ago I lived next door to a Time Lord. Happy days. We used to go and watch Trumper Bay Lightning in the air-hockey... and do you remember that amazing benefit gig when Elvis played with the Beatles...

Several years ago I lived next door to a body farm. Spring storms could be deafening, as the green-bud babies wailed on their windblown stalks, and on hot summer days the stink of sweat could be indescribable. But it had its upsides, too; I could usually find a few nice bodies left behind by the robot harvesters in the fall, which really helped with the student loans.

Several years ago I lived next door to an empty lot where, years and years before, a house had once stood with a big old garden. Kids in the neighborhood were warned to keep away from it after several contracted tetanus from being scratched by a blackberry thicket in one corner, and not even the yellowjackets would touch the apples that fell from the gnarled tree in front.

Several years ago I lived next to a potato chip factory. There was a man who once worked there but who was fired because he had been caught doing unspeakable things with the potato peeler. She was fired too.

Several years ago, I lived next door to a lost civilization. Seems that, while they were experts in many fields and possessed near-miraculous abilities, they'd never gotten around to inventing cartography or discovering the compass, so they all ended up stuck in a subdivision. I suggested once that they try using constellations to navigate their way home, but they were, as a race, very nearsighted, and dismissed the stars as a superstitious fiction.