The two conifers in front of our house came down recently.
Ugly things, though strangely in keeping with some of the unsettling features we inherited when we moved in.
Now we look down on our street with a wide unimpeded view, and this has enabled me to immerse myself in the hitherto foreign activity that is neighbourhood watch.
In Cargill St for 31 years, we were beneath road and bush.
We could hear Dunedin's disenchanted youth jumping on our car and tearing off wing mirrors, but we could not watch.
Now we can, and I am dumbfounded it has taken me so long to realise how interesting a neighbourhood can be.
Take Twenty Dollar Man.
He would be up and down the street all day, popping in and out of houses with the systemic rigour of a meter reader.
Soon he came to our house.
My wife has just driven to Christchurch with my wallet in the glove box, he said, I just need $20 for groceries.
The next time he came, his electricity was going to be cut off that afternoon unless he gave them $20, and his girlfriend didn't have any money either.
No mention of wife.
On Easter Sunday, Twenty Dollar Man got a ring from the airport from the father he hadn't seen for nine years.
You better have some beer in the fridge, son, said the father, and the son came straight round to me . . .
Did I mention I actually gave him $20 the first time? But I have never claimed to be a smart person.
Train Guy is cut from an entirely different cloth.
A regular sighting from my lofty front garden perch, it was only a matter of time before I descended the drive to find out more.
Train Guy was made redundant from the railways by Richard Prebble, and the only piece of carpet in his life was ripped from under his legs.
He loves trains, his flat is full of train stuff, including a radio which has the railway frequency so he can track every arrival and departure from the Dunedin station.
Once alerted to train movement, Train Guy pedals down our street to watch the train from a closer spot.
Train Guy cycles a lot.
He has a mate in the north end who loves trains so bikes there some days.
He told me not many people know the road is slightly uphill after St Andrew St.
He says he is going north this Christmas.
Waitati.
But the neighbourhood action is diagonally across the road.
When we moved here, there were sneakers hanging from the phone lines, but they were urban myth sneakers; the days of some Dunedin streets resembling the Shoe Warehouse have gone . . .
Our sneakers are still hanging dolefully, anonymously, but what is happening on the corner over there is much bigger.
We noticed the phenomenon shortly after we moved in.
Vehicles would arrive and park two metres out from the footpath.
In exactly the same spot.
I have inspected the area.
There is no broken glass or potholes.
It happened again last week, one of them a Range Rover shape.
There was no overt loading or unloading, just the weird two-metre thing.
But crime is based on facades, I wasn't fooled.
We must be talking major criminal activity here.
And because criminals always notice things, I am sure they've noticed me watching them, so I have to stay out there forever barbecuing my frail body in the searing Dunedin sun in case they come back.
After all, if they did, and I was gone, they'd know I had called the cops, that I was a nark, and that they were headed for stir.
They don't come back, but I know the double-bluff game - people have been double-bluffing me since I was 5.
Neighbourhood watch.
Testing times, tough times.
But by hokey, it sure beats staring at conifers.
