WTAF?!

We’re a pretty quiet household, but I don’t think we would get on if we were neighbours.

Not sure I understand this comment, is it wrong to hope that a convicted paedophile dies sooner rather than later?

If so, fingers crossed I don’t get new neighbours with views like yours!

I live in Cumbria
My next door neighbour lives in Southampton, it will be a sad day when she sells up.

My neighbour spent 3 hours sorting fence posts with me at the weekend, then re-attached the panels when the cement had dried out on Monday evening while I was still at work. Maybe he just wanted to ensure there was a barrier between us. He also often does the grass out front for us 🙂

Really friendly helpful bloke.

Moved in December 2015. Bought a semi-detached house.

After living there for 15 months I have not yet met our neighbours who live in the house attached to ours!

The entrances face different ways, so don’t bump into them in the street. We have invited them round for a drink, but they couldn’t make it. Can’t understand why they haven’t made any effort at all to meet us. I guess some people just want to keep themselves to themselves.

I live in Cumbria
My next door neighbour lives in Southampton

That’s a big garden.

Lost one of mine a couple of weeks ago. Funeral next week 🙁 I couldn’t say she was my best friend, but we got on well enough and have been in each others houses – very sad.

That’s somebody a couple of doors down – not sure if most people are just doing “next door neighbours” – I guess I’d count 9 or 10 other households as my neighbours, living on a small cul-de-sac where people do talk in the street. Very happy with the neighbours we have – hopefully they cope with us. Sorry to have lost our old next door neighbours who we got on with very well – though lost in a slightly different way as they now live a couple of hundred metres away, so we still visit! Nothing wrong with the new couple who seem lovely, but we have rather less to do with them – and less in common, our kids have grown up together and used to play together a lot. Chap at the end of the road I tend to share tools with – he currently has my soldering iron – and also go on occasional bike rides with.

A couple of the other neighbours have been governors at the local school – not something I want to get into, but I sometimes get roped into things with them. Oh, and next door is also group leader of the local scouts, hence getting roped into doing stuff with them.

Older couple next door who do all of our front garden work as she enjoys it, lovely people who enjoy my quite loud music and often knock wanting me to add something I’m playing to their spotify list. Lend us tools in return for PC assistance at times. Yesterday she knocked for me holding a brand new looking Carerra Hybrid she found in the street near our houses, it was bike registered and had been stolen from a shed in the next street and the owner didn’t even know it was gone. He collected it last night and gave me a decent bottle of Neuf de Pape. It’s good round here – Bar the travelling bike thieves.

Do have a **** over the road who has spent three years now replacing his dead grandad’s bungalow with a 5 bed mock Georgian with no end to the building in sight but what can you do.

Best neighbours we had were an old deaf couple, telly was always a bit loud but we could have our music on 11. Fabulous gardener the old fella used to keep, fruit veg flowers impeccably maintained. His Wife wanted to be nearer her relatives up north so they move, he was dead within 3 months :(. The new lot were trouble ending in their car being fire bombed 😯

South East London

We live in a semi, and to the side that is not connected to our house is a couple of young brothers, their wives and kids, they inherited the house from their parents and decided to live there rather than sell it and split it I guess, they are nice enough and let me round in to their garden when I need to get at the back of my hedges, or sure up the fence or whatever.

Other side actually connected to our house is the 93 year old lady who has been there 65+ years. She was able to show us where our boiler was, explain what a back boiler was etc, tell us the code to our alarm, when the windows were done and all sort=s of useful local info and gossip about the other residents of the street. Havent seen her for a while due to the weather. Only down side to her is that between her and her retired son keeping on top of her gardens it make mine look bad.

Then over the road in a massively extended house are a massively extended Asian family, I think there are 4 generations of people living there, they are nice and friendly and there is ALWAYS someone in so the postman never needs to take a parcel away again

Don’t really know the ones on the left, an older couple, been there a long time- they seem nice but we don’t have much contact. The other side are newer, they’re really nice and have 2 great kids (6 and 8) that we’ve slightly adopted. It’s not like The Old Days or anything but yeah, they’re good neighbours.

Now ask yourselves, are you a good neighbour? What would your neighbours say in this thread? I think the old folks would say much the same about us. The other family, well, they say good fences make good neighbours, I put their fence back up when it all collapsed so as long as I did a good job I reckon I’m in.

Mine is an arsehole. He probably thinks the same of me.

His bathroom leaked to the extent that it was coming through our walls yet he was unable or unwilling to sorting it out. In the end I get Environmental Health in and I suspect that it cost him a few quid. Tough.

We don’t speak.

I don’t like his cat either.

Berkshire, but not rural.

To the left, semi-retired couple in their sixties. Very nice, but seem to worry a bit.

To the right, a couple in their early fifties. Both working. Two sons, the eldest of whom is away at Uni now.

Directly opposite is a pair of semis.

To the right a retired couple, the guy is very active in the local MTB club and was the one that eventually nagged me into getting out on my bike after we’d been here a few years. He’s what you might call a “professional Yorkshireman”. He (thinks he) is right about everything, and everything he’s done is better than anything you’ve done. But he knows all the local gossip and is always happy to help, and they both dote on our daughter. They have a grown-up son who’s married but his wife has totally vetoed the idea of children so our daughter is a kind of surrogate grandchild.

To the left a much younger couple with a baby son. They seem nice but we don’t see them very often. Much better than the previous occupants of that house, who somehow permanently had a skip in their front garden. It would fill up, get replaced with an empty one. Fill up, get replaced with an empty one. Repeat. This went on for years. I don’t know where it was all coming from. I think they were doing house clearance jobs or something.

We’ve been told we’re much better than the previous owners of our house. A middle aged couple who were constantly having massive arguments. Police often involved. Lots of financial issues. The woman was in court one time for selling her leased car. They sold the house because they were divorcing and left it in a bit of a state. Several interior doors had clearly been forcibly opened and patched up afterwards. The house was mostly filthy, the gas & electric pre-pay meters had maxed-out the emergency overdraft limit, and the garage was full of crap that took me a month of weekends to clear out. We kept getting final demand letters addressed to the wife (it was clear she was the one with the champagne taste / lemonade money problem), bailiffs on the doorstep a few times and the Police once because she’d not turned up at another court appearance. All the neighbours have said we’re nicer than them 🙂

We always invite all the neighbours over for drinks at Christmas, and it goes well, but we never get reciprocal invites. Make of that what you will…

our block of terraced houses consists of 7 houses…we’re near the middle.
end house – cranky old guy lives alone…hardly see him..he’s ok but can bea bit victor meldrew at times
next house along – quiet couple with 2 teenage daughters and a younger son. hardly see them except in the mornings when theyre doing the school/college run or if we’ve accepted a parcel for them. hardly hear them through the walls unless the little boy is playing in his bedroom…the mum is very quiet but the bloke is a bit of a zz top lookalike…he seems ok though when i’ve spoken to him
then its us – 3 kids means we’re a noisy house at the best of times
next door on the other side of us – couple and their teenage son…rest of the kids have moved out. theyre a lovely couple…she pops round now and again and they sometimes give the wife a lift into work. usually theyre very quiet unless its the weekend and theyve been on the booze or have friends round…we allow them to bo noisy form time to time considering how much noise they put up with from us
next one along – really nice old dear – very friendly and caring…lives alone but wife will go over to check on her from time to time for a chat…her son and daughter do visit regularly…she always puts our bins back on our drive after theyve been emptied
next one along – middle aged african lady – shes a nurse and shes got a couple of kids but we never really see them…think she has a partner but again we never see him either
end house – another african gentleman…owns the cleanest nissan almera ever!! i think ive only ever seen him about 4 times…never spoken to him but he seems ok-ish

both our immediate neighbours are ok…we get on with them. we accept parcel deliveries for them and they do the same for us. the couple with the children we dont see or hear form that often the ones on the other side we see a bit more of and get on with better.

funny thing is both blokes are called John…the bloke who we bought the house from was also called John

What would your neighbours say in this thread?

really nice people…but noisy f***rs…especially the kids!! 😆

We live in a central part of Bristol, with dozens of streets of late Victorian terraces.

My neighbours on both sides are also called Ben!

I think there’s something naturally a bit more sociable about this design of house, as you emerge from the front door and pass only a short front “garden” before entering the shared street. Although cars are parked everywhere, it’s not used as a through road and is therefore pretty quiet.

There are 80-odd houses on the street, of which I’d say we know around 50% of the households to at least say “hello” to – and we’re on first-name / babysitting swap / kids playdate terms with about 30%.

We counted 27 under 5-year-olds at the annual street party back in 2011, which gives some idea of the street’s flavour. Although we collectively failed to do a street party in 2016, there’s been one every other year since the mid 2000s.

We also have a “playing out” session once a month, whereby our lightly-trafficed street is closed to cars and the kids…well, play out.

Follow-up to my post about my elderly convicted paedophile neighbour… He was taken away by ambulance this morning, so perhaps new neighbours might be on the horizon!

😀

Is it front gardens which are the problem then? Certainly not much in the way of that here – we have a small patch of grass still, though most of the neighbours have paved over theirs for parking cars. Possibly more importantly though, there are no physical barriers at the front between about 6 house in a row we’re in the middle of, and mostly fairly minimal barriers elsewhere (the one chap who put up a fence I’d consider the least sociable). Nobody at all has a fence/hedge between the front of their house and the street. I suppose it gives more of communal sense – I do have to tell my kids to keep off other people’s property, but actually most people don’t seem to mind too much (with the obvious exception of fence bloke).

What’s more, we haven’t ever closed the road to cars so kids can play out – the “road” is shared space (no separate pavements) and they play out all the time anyway.

There certainly is something to the physical layout encouraging people to interact more and increasing the sense of community – we can’t help but come into fairly close contact with our neighbours regularly, whereas with a typical older suburban layout with fenced in front gardens that’s much less the case.

My neighbours on both sides are also called Ben!

Please, please tell me you live on a hill.