27 Jul 10 The bullying behavour of our neighbours, Mr and Mrs Twattock*
Following on from my previous post about the nasty neighbours this entry examines the use of tactics and demeanour to assert unreasonable control over a neighbour – in this instance, us
…all the unwritten sentiment amply stuffed between the lines
So at about 11.30 on Thursday night I do the rounds of the house where I make sure all the doors that are permanently locked are in fact locked. And on the doorstep below the letter-box is a neatly folded piece of lined exercise book paper.
It said, in precis and including all the unwritten sentiment amply stuffed between the lines, that:
How dare you do some garden landscaping without asking us?
We have just got back from our holiday and we felt compelled to stroll into your garden uninvited to make sure you have been behaving yourselves while we have been away. And we are shocked and angered to the core. How dare you do some garden landscaping without asking us if we minded first? I am really pissed off with you because some of the stuff you have dug up is near the fence, between our properties – you know the one we have been pushing back into your property, with a big lump of concrete for the last year, thus extending our border.
We knew you were going to do this you bastards because you had the audacity to talk to another neighbour about it and you didn’t ask our permission.
You are in contravention of the Party Wall Act even though I have no idea what I am talking about
You are in contravention of the Party Wall Act even though I have no idea what I am talking about it just sounds officious and I want to make you think I am going to sue you. And even though your landscaping is nowhere near the party wall I will persist with this hollow bullying, in fact I am going to give you so much shit about this because I am angry.
You must learn that it is not permitted for you to do what you want within the bounds of your own property
I am choosing in this letter to ignore the continual abuse we afford you, namely that:
- we we go out of our way to blank you completely;
- park our collection of over-sized 4×4 vehicles to make it as dangerous and difficult as possible for you to get out of your narrow drive;
- act surly and superior and as antisocial as we can possibly be towards you;
- complain non-stop and blame you for building work that was beyond your control and happened over a year ago;
- act like sorry victims with no regard for others misfortunes
- bad mouth you to any neighbour we come across.
I am, however, choosing in this letter to accuse you of a lack of courtesy towards us because you did not ask our permission to do some work within your own property. I am also ignoring the fact that the work will have no impact on us and we will not be able to see it, other than on our uninvited visits into your garden to have a snoop around.
You will present yourself to me at the earliest opportunity where I shall bollock you to make you stop your outrageous gardening practice. You must learn that it is not permitted for you to do what you want within the bounds of your own property.
Yours etc.
The Twattocks*
More later…
(*Real names changed)
25 Jul 10 Nasty neighbours
Don’t you just hate it when someone thinks that whatever you do is subject to their approval simply because they live next door.
“Errr , did you know your house just got flooded?”
As a family we have had our share of bad luck, not least getting flooded out of our house in 2007 and being unable to return until 2009. During that time, the place was initially derelict and then a massive building site for about a year. From time to time we did spare a thought for our semi detached neighbours. They had exchanged contracts to buy their house an hour or two before it actually flooded. The previous owners laid a cheap carpet over the mess and did a runner, not informing the new owners of the flood. In fact our first words to them was something like: “Errr , did you know your house just got flooded?”. They didn’t.
And sure enough, they sold up and fucked off – the best day of our entire experience of living next door to them
The previous family had moved in a couple of years before the flood. They extended their boundaries to maximise its value. In the process they made our drive an almost impossibly narrow channel. They shoved a conservatory near the boundary of the two properties with the windows looking straight onto our garden. They were generally fairly abrupt and not at all concerned about our inconvenience; why should they be? They were just looking to maximise value, sell and leave the pissed off neighbours behind them. And sure enough, they sold up and fucked off – the best day of our entire experience of living next door to them.
The new couple seemed nice enough. But our experience of living next to them started out with us moving out of our flooded and wrecked house. I think I first met them as I was waiting for a lorry to come and take our belongings to a landfill site. Concurrently they were getting out of a removal van to find out that they were moving into a flooded property.
When we did see them, the strain showed.
So we moved out – our place being uninhabitable and they stayed put. As the next two years progressed, we were conscious of their situation. We told the builders not to upset them while they were at work on our house. And sure enough, day after day they became massively upset at the noise, holes coming through the party wall, their wooden floor was wrecked, cracks in the walls and more. The skips outside the property inconvenienced them and tore the tarmac up, noise, noise and more noise. And during this time they even had a baby. When we did see them, the strain showed.
Cheek-by-jowl living was never going to become cheek-to-cheek
And in the year since we moved back into the house, we have found that it clearly has left an indelible mark on their attitude towards us. I get the feeling that they hold us personably responsible. From a rational perspective, this is completely unreasonable, but it has clearly gone beyond that and they are now emotively extracting their revenge for their two years of hell – our hell not really being anything that concerns them. Clearly, from the moment we moved back in, cheek-by-jowl living was never going to become cheek-to-cheek.
Either grow up and act like adults or move out
But it’s all very petty. He wears a permanent scowl and she goes from greeting to whinging within two sentences. They have two (sometimes three) huge 4×4 vehicles plus their parent’s people carrier. As a matter of course they park these so close to our narrow driveway that it takes a three-point-turn to get out. It makes us invisible to passing vehicles. On three occasions passing traffic has screached to a halt as we pull out of our drive and narrowly missed our vehicles slowly emerging from behind a huge block of Mitsubishi military metal 4×4. I think the speeding bus was perhaps the scariest incident – it certainly made the kids scream. We have tried the concilliatory approach, the ‘please could you…’ approach and the ‘okay lets just not let it get to us’ approach. But it is not a friendly relationship, which is a shame really.
I think we could have ignored this pettiness in the hope that eventually they would either grow up and act like adults or move out. That was until Thursday.
14 Jul 10 When it all goes wrong
I have been listening - to an album called The Defamation of Strickland Banks by Plan B lately. It is the sad tale across thirteen songs of a man whose life goes from bad to worse all because he stayed somewhere too long and didn’t know when to just let go and leave it all behind.
It makes you think when your own life goes wrong how much of a spiral you can get into. Since the floods of 2007 which took the house apart, and ultimately led to the business faltering. The level of personal stress and strain has taken its toll on my health and the amount of money I ended up owing was so frightening that I could not bear to answer my phone or open letters.
Weirdly, all this time later, I have started answering my phone and all the people I thought would be threatening and demanding and frightening, like banks and credit card companies and solicitors and so on have all been really understanding. They have been really helpful and not scary at all. I still have to sort out the problems, but I want to do that and draw a line under it and they are actually very understanding and seem quite good about it.
If you’re in the same boat, just talk to them.
