I don’t have any particular terrible stories to tell. But the thread on the landowner picking on cyclists trying to carry bikes on his footpath got me thinking. Anyone had any terrible incidents with neighbours? I'm pretty lucky as we know nearly everyone by name on our road and get on really well with nearly all of them (pretty uncommon these days probably- at least down sarf)
Tale 1-. One day fairly soon after we moved in I found a car parked across our drive. The old guy who lived there before never used his garage, and with everyone knowing everyone on the road it was accepted that people could park there given the limited parking in the rest of the street. Without knowing who it was and being 10pm at night I thought I would leave a polite note saying something along the lines 'please note that we will now be using the garage from now on and therefore if you would mind leaving the driveway clear we would be very grateful'. I got woken up the next morning with a lady in her dressing ringing our door bell. She proceeded to scream at me about her living in the street 15years and has never been treated like this before, everyone knows whos car its is, etc.. I tried to explain i didn’t know whos car it was, and wasnt going to knock on doors at 10pm, and was only a polite note. She carried on screaming. 2 years on, she still hasnt apologised.
Tale 2- The SO was round a neigbours house having a little drink with the ladies on the street. One of the ladies who neither of us has never met before decided to have it out with her about a pallet of bricks we had outside our house. She banged on about needing a license and it was illegal. It got my other half upset and set her off crying which only increased the abuse (not very neighbourly to a new neighbor I my opinion). We didn’t have a license, but given the general friendly attitude in the street and it being a dead end it was not really an issue. We parked our car elsewhere so it wasn’t taking up a space. The next day we got the bricks shifted anyway to maintain harmony. But we saw her later on round the corner where our car was parked and she barked at me this time. ‘nice to see you moved those bricks, don’t do it again’. Of course I took offence and wasn’t likely to start crying. I questioned how us not having a license actual made any difference to her as they would be there anyway. Our car was parked where we were standing. She carried on banging on, and started to say she had to walk over our builders tools on her way to work as they off loaded (which would have been pretty coincidental timing as they didn’t store them on the street and was only 10ins every morning). Plus she drove to work, and as mentioned before we live at the end of a cul-de-sac. None of it was getting through to her, but she just said ‘lets forget and shake hands’. I refused as she still couldn’t see how she was being totally unreasonable. Not the first time shes let off at neighbours apparently. Her fella is a nice guy and made her come with flowers the next day (through the street grapevine we found this out). She wasn’t exactly polite about it.
Not exactly bricks through windows I know.
touche
