curtain twitchers

A friend of mine, a police officer said to me " Us police love curtain twitchers".

Me! I'm a curtain switcher... we've just bought new net cutains for our front windows and, being a bit thicker, I can't see through them and have to peer around the sides. Most infuriating!

Twitcher! Does this word not exist in American English? (I assume that's what my predictive text speaks.)

Me too, no net curtains but I’m often seen nosing out the window, my neighbours are great at keeping an eye out for strangers etc no one minds as we all keep a look out for anything untoward. I don’t think it’s a bad thing.

DH left for work the other day and I started pottering around. Made a coffee, made the bed, checked my email...
20 minutes later he texted to tell me he was still sitting in the car outside the house. A builder working on the house next door had fallen off the roof, broken his leg and the ambulance was there, blocking our street. There was a long line of traffic, including a bus and a lorry. I completely missed it all. The opposite of a curtain twitcher, I guess
The builder is fine by the way, apart from the broken leg!

Nothing wrong with a healthy interest in our fellowman or woman. How else would those in need be noticed?

We live a good way from neighbours but last week the derelict cottage next door came up for sale, to be auctioned next month. Our house is currently covered in scaffolding and sheeting, windows covered in blue plastic so can't see anything, have to keep strolling round the garden to catch sight of viewers. Not sure if this is a healthy interest or am I downright nosy.

I'm definitely not a curtain twitcher. My grandad was - after retirement, I remember him spending a lot of time standing by the window and giving a running commentary along the lines of: "That's Mrs X coming up the road - she'll be going for her fish", "I wonder where Bob is going at this time of day!" and "Joe's lad has just been up to Colin's for his newspaper" etc.

It used to drive me mad.
I couldn't understand why anyone would be so interested in other people's comings and goings, and even at a fairly young age, it felt like an invasion of privacy to me.
Since then, I have realized that I am just a very private person, and also that I am so bad at recognising faces that I would struggle to do what he did even if I wanted ?

We are a street that cares for each other but not nosy. I'm not a curtain twitcher as my windows are too high to see anything except a beautiful tree in the garden opposite! I would have to stand at the window keeking out

No . I am not at all nosy about my neighbours, although I do offer help if I think it’s needed - I don’t snoop or gossip though.

My (lovely) MIL sounds like MamaCaz’s grandad. She knows who is going where, why, and how long they are likely to be gone . It would drive me mad if I lived near someone like that.

No, I'm not a twitcher.
My flat is alongside the path to our block; the kitchen window overlooks the door to the block..
I ignore any comings and goings, because I would never get any peace if I didn't.

Plus, I'm not interested.

I have nothing to twitch my curtains about.

I can't see the street from my windows as my house is set back from the road. I look out at farm land. I see nobody unless someone walks through our garden to visit our neighbours. (Only one other house nearby). We have shared pedestrian access.

I'm a Roman blind rover . We live in a cul-de-sac that leads to a shortcut to the next road. Most mornings I put one eye at the gap between our blinds in the bedroom to watch the mums delivering their children to the primary school in the next road. I can tell who the working mums are, they are in a hurry. Then also the day staff arriving for the care home near the school. The night staff come off duty and there are always big chats and laughter going on between the (mostly African and West Indian) colleagues as the shifts switch over. I love seeing them, it makes me happy.

I am not a curtain twitcher. As I have two windows in my living room I can see people coming and going but not interested unless it is something out the ordinary. and nothing much happens here.

We live near a local shop and take away where anyone going in to purchase something must pass along outside our Drive, so after living here for many years, we have got to recognise some regular familiar faces, their shopping habits, timings etc, and to some extent what they buy!
However, we don’t know their names, so have given them ‘Pet’ names of our own. We have Mr. Garden Ornament, who owns a nice big Motorhome which he stores in his front garden down the Road, but never goes away in it anywhere, hence it’s his Garden Ornament! Then there’s Mr Knome, who’ appearance looks like he’s just stepped down of the stage of the Snow White Pantomime, complete with a long white beard and long bushy hair and a funny little Pixy hat!
Then there’s Hooligan man, always shouting and swearing to himself, especially when his funds are not available for any reason when he goes to use the cash machine, hence making his large bag full of booze he regularly buys most days unobtainable! Finally, there is Mrs Yap a lot, an elderly lady who always calls in with her family of dogs, and leaves them tied upto the line of small trolley baskets outside the shop, whilst she goes inside, preventing anyone from using the trolleys whiteout the risk of being bitten, and boy! Do they yap their protest at being left to anyone within a 100yard radius!

We have a sort of Neighbourhood Watch with a few neighbiurs and check curtains open and close at appropriate times of the day etc but, currently, I am sitting on the stairs a lot so I can keep an eye on people viewing the empty house next door.

I love my neighbour across the road from me. She is definitely a curtain twitcher but she has also helped me when I had an anaphylactic shock. Her and her husband injected me with adrenaline, called an ambulance and contacted my family. They really look out for me ,such kind people.

One side of our house overlooks fields and a river so part from an occasional dog-walker in the distance there’s nothing to see.

The other side, our kitchen looks along the cul de sac but the windows are high so you’d need to be standing up all day to see anything much.

I’ll admit, I did contact my neighbours last year. They’d only moved in a few days before and the chap told us he’d discharged himself from hospital to move and had pneumonia and a collapsed lung. He sounded terrible. A couple of days later, there was an ambulance at their door on a Sunday so I thought I ought to ask if I could do anything, with them being new to the area.

It turned out to be nothing to do with the man’s illness, as I’d feared - his wife had fallen off the top of a six-foot ladder while trying to cut their hedges! Thankfully, no damage done except for some spectacular bruises. Ouch!

I like to keep abreast of things but there's nowhere really to "twitch". It's mainly what I hear from others. Being a quiet area and in a close there's very little that goes on, plus I'm sandwiched between two main areas so out of the way of everything really.

If I wanted to be really nosy, there's the garden wall to lean on which faces out into a small road but it's too cold now.

No, I'm not a curtain twitcher. Only if I hear a thud outside . We live on a main road and over the years there's been the odd car go into the back of another. The lady next door but one always darts out with her brush to sweep up the broken glass. She never fails We have to laugh. It's a standing joke now. If something happens we say where's D-t with her brush.
Apart than that I usually miss everything else.

We know some of our nearby neighbours, but like JuliaM, we give names to ones we don’t know.
Rucksack Couple, who always have a rucksack,
Happy Harry, never responds to a ‘Good Morning’, if you meet him,
Hyacinth Bouquet, obvious really.

The rooms that face the front in our house all have blinds, so no curtain twitching here.
However, we do have a kind of Neighbourhood Watch in that we would all look out for each other.

Oh, I see neighbour across the road has just arrived home. I wonder where he's been

I barely notice anything

Lol no, always the last to know anything. Gossip just doesn't interest me either... I listen but don't pass it on or think about it much

I just happened to be at the computer when the car drew up. Normally I wouldn't notice, it was just rather funny that I was reading this thread when he arrived home