I live "in the middle of the woods" — I can see the road up my long uphill driveway, but I'm tucked away. I can see my up the hill neighbor's roof when the leaves are off the trees and my downhill neighbor's back in the winter and if I really look for it.

A couple years ago I came home around 9 p.m. after a friend's gig at a pub in a seacoast town. As I came slowly down the driveway, I met a kid walking his bicycle up from the vicinity of my house. We made eye contact, but I didn't stop and question him.

I had barely made it into the house when the phone rang. It was my across the road neighbor wanting to tell me he'd seen a kid on a bicycle duck down my driveway. I called the local police just to alert them to keep a watch for a suspicious person on a bike (and because I'm an older woman living alone in the middle of the woods), but I didn't find anything amiss. An officer called me back for more information and again later after noting a couple bicyclists several roads away and checking out the trail head in the woods further down my road (behind the soccer field).

My neighbor called me again — the kid on the bike was on the road in front of his house, just sitting there. So Dennis went out to question him. He said he was waiting for a friend. (By this time it was close to 10 p.m. Not many people on the streets of Nottingham in the dark.)

I feel better knowing Dennis is on the alert — he's the only neighbor who can at least see the head of my driveway. And I know the Nottingham police, while a very small force, do patrol the neighborhood — especially because the back way to the school's soccer field is just down the road.

Tom and I had two break ins back in the 1980s. (And he had one before we met.) But then my then up the hill neighbor took in a state cop as a boarder and he parked his car out front. No more problems!

Linn