By Chloe Grayling Wellness 19.06.2026

“Our Best Friends Became Our Neighbours – And It Changed Our Lives Forever”

When Chloe Grayling moved into her 140-year-old cottage, she never expected her best friends would move in next door – here’s what they don’t tell you about building your village.

Our closest friends became our closest neighbours almost entirely by accident.

Okay, okay, that’s only half of the truth.

The whole truth is that, during the schmozzle that was peak-COVID in 2020, my husband Patrick and I bought a 140-year-old cottage with a bungalow out the back.

Before we moved in, I spent months poring over Pinterest boards and Airbnb forums, dreaming of the renovations that would unfold, the guests we would host, and the income we would generate by renting it out. Then, we moved into the cottage and promptly realised that we actually adored the five-and-a-half acres of space around us far too much to fill the little self-contained building six metres away with strangers.

Just as we realised this, our dear friend Lucas – who’d also undergone a pandemic-inspired tree-change and moved back to the country with his parents – spent the first night of many camped out in his van on our driveway. A month later, we moved into a freshly painted bedroom, and he moved out of the van into the bungalow. Six months after that, he met the love of his life (and a love of our lives, too!) Rachel, and she nestled into that bungalow with him.

Five years later, all four of us are thick as thieves – and we just helped them tape up boxes full of their belongings, ready to move into their very own, names-on-the-lease, whole dang street-address-without-us home. They’re newly married, and the world’s best godparents to our one-year-old daughter, Violet.

Getting to live in such proximity to humans we adore was a genuine privilege, and one that I’ll hold onto forever. We have plans to coexist just as tightly with loved ones many decades from now. Our dream is for Lucas, Rach, and a jumble of our other friends to move back onto our property in a series of tiny homes and yurts to make our own version of a retirement village we’ll lovingly dub: ‘The Commune’.

There are so many things I learned from the experience of living on a property with my best friends. In a world where we are constantly reaching for ‘The Village’, craving connection, and trying to build up relationships that amount to a true community, here are two in particular that I feel called to share.

1. The big moments are for guests. The little ones are for The Village.

Far out, we had some big moments wrapped up in it all.

One involves Patrick bundling our dogs out into the bungalow so that Lucas and Rachel could take care of them while I brought our daughter into the world at home, just a few yards away. Another was a fortnight where Lucas lost two people very close to him a week apart, and we worked through it together with conversation and song.

Then there are the Christmas mornings, when the three of us were in on a surprise involving baby ducklings and tears from my husband. The sort of memories that you hold with your whole heart, for your whole life.

But that’s friend stuff. The rockstar shift. The highlights.

The moments that build up a community relationship are much quieter, more humdrum. A thunderstorm rolling in, all outside to marvel. A rat in the toilet. A salt-and-pepper tofu takeout on the way home, a mandarin offered, a ‘yes, and...’ conversation that’s agreeable and illuminating.

2. Help is always there – if you just ask for it

Speaking of the auspicious Toilet Rat incident! (Indulge me for a moment).

The story goes that somewhere around 2022, Lucas wandered inside, where I was busy in the kitchen. He had a bit of a strange air about him - a bit distracted - but since the four of us are vaguely artsy people, I decided he must be working through a project in his noggin and brushed it off as we chatted for a few minutes about dinner plans, works-in-progress, and life.

The conversation felt as though it was wrapping up when he seemed to recall why he’d come into the cottage in the first place:

“Oh, by the way… I might need a hand; I think there’s a rat in the toilet,” he said.

“Sorry? You think there’s a... Why do you think there’s a rat in the toilet??” I replied.

“Because I woke up, and went to do a wee, and by the time I got around to opening my eyes properly and looking down, there was a rat looking back at me. I had weed on him. And flushed, a bit. He seems kinda mad.”

Sure enough, I followed him out to the bungalow bathroom and there in the toilet bowl was quite a cross-looking rat, who’d presumably come out of the pipes in a reverse Flushed Away situation.

A pillowcase, a paintbrush pole and lots of hooting and yelling later, Lucas and I had relocated the rat, still damp but quite contented, to the furthest corner of the property.

The lesson learned wasn’t one in rat-wrangling (thankfully, we haven’t seen one in the toilet or anywhere else since that day!) but one in asking for what you need, and knowing that support is there when you need it.

We speak a lot about the necessity of being a villager if you’d like to be a part of The Village, but in my experience, people are all too happy to help where we can; it’s the asking for it that can be tricky.

It’s come up time and again in the many moons since our furry friend in the loo, but every time it does – when bins need to go out, when postpartum anxiety is getting overwhelming, when a birthday card or a deep discussion is required – we’ve learned to ask for help and know that we’ll be asked, one day, in return.

And whenever any of us seems to be skirting around an issue or meandering around a point, someone surely chimes in:

“What’s up? You’ve got big Toilet Rat energy.”