In the 10 years he has lived in his house in Wavertree in Liverpool, Greg Schofield is not sure he had ever gone into the alleyway behind his rear garden, an unlovely strip of weed-strewn cobbles where some neighbours kept their bins. Though he and his wife are close to their immediate neighbours on one side, there were only two other families in the street they knew to say hello to.
Come lockdown, however, something changed. Someone set up a WhatsApp group and a couple of neighbours asked if anyone was up for tidying the alley. After most of the 14 households in the block turned up, each clearing their immediate patch, “It got people quite excited,” says Schofield. “People began to see how nice the cobbles could look without the weeds.”
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