Sounds like ‘hanky’ Joe
living in a Victorian terrace house with single skin brick walls you pretty much hear most things that go on with your neighbours. For 6 months or so i had a homage to the family from shameless living next door (on day one they sent their 5 year old round to “borrow a cigarette for mummy”).
The teenage boy had the bedroom on the opposite side of the wall to me. Pretty much every night you would hear the unmistakable sound of yards of cellatape being peeled off a roll and wrapped around something. Swiftly followed by rubbery squeak of balloons rubbing together. Well you can gues the rest. Although the scream of shock when they burst one night was something to hear!
thing is, if I could hear it, surely the rest of his household could as well!
SamurAI ffs.
single skin brick walls you pretty much hear most things that go on with your neighbours.
I grew up in a 70s semi detached. Next door was an old Austrian man - totally lovely. We suspect he was a former prisoner of war who never wanted to go home. He would give me sage bits of advice as I was growing up:
'Stay in education for as long as your parents will support you. Then retire'
and
'When your parents ask you want you want for your your birthday tell them firmly "Dad, I want your car" '
Anyway - entirely nice. But - for 30 years - we'd frequently hear the sound of gentle hammering on the party wall - sounded like someone hammering in a picture hook - careful and tentative. But in any session there must have been twenty or so picture hooks (or whatever) and it felt like this was happening at least every one two weeks and often quite late in the evening, year in, year out.
We never asked him... but were really curious as to what needs nailing to the wall so regularly and in such large volumes. Maybe a massive etymology collection.
Anyway, eventually he moved out - the house went on the market - bought by a new family. We had the friendly introductory chat, with them not raising the topic we had to come right out and ask - What had the old guy been nailing to the wall all those years? Absolutely nothing - no nails, no nail holes in the walls.
SamurAI ffs.
Well done, have a biscuit for being so clever.
There’s a recurring theme of people getting angry about other people parking outside their houses.
The place we lived when I was very young (we moved out when I was six) had a grumpy neightbour who was convince the boundary fence between our houses was in the wrong place and if we planted anything within 2ft of the fence he'd come round and dig It out (it was in the wrong place - but in his favour not ours)
Anyway... as we were moving out he had a long and noisy argument with us and the removal men because the removal truck was casting a shadow in his property.
I own two flats next door to each other so I am my own weird neighbour. Who do I complain to?
SamurAI ffs
侍 FFS - why would you use your foreign typography at all ?
When I was a kid I'm sure our elderly neighbours (brother and sister - neither of them ever married.....) sat with a glass against the dividing wall all day/night.
One evening my Dad was in the kitchen hammering a panel pin into some wood with a small hammer, cue knock at the door and said neighbour asking him to stop hammering....... Best part was the kitchen was on the opposite side of the house on the external wall!
Same neighbours and another hammer incident when Dad was doing some work in the bathroom early evening after he'd got home from work. Neighbour came round and said to stop hammering and informed him that his sister was in bed - Dad not being in the best of moods that day replied with "What do you want me to do about it - get in there with her?"
When I was in my late teens I can home from college one day and decided to play my guitar - being the kind considerate person I am I decided to have my amp turned up to 1 (it goes all the way to 10 you know...) as not to disturb the neighbours or my dog. Anyway quite happily quietly jamming away and the door bell rings - louder than my guitar (and waking the dog up).... Neighbour is standing there and says "have you got a guitar?", "yes I have" I replied thinking he was going to offer some pointers or chat guitars with me........ "well turn it down it's too loud...." he proclaims.
I apologised and said I'd be more considerate. Thinking it must be the tone and frequency due to the low volume that meant he could hear it I decided to experiment - I said sorry to the dog and cranked the amp up to 5 and proceeded to belt out Paranoid and a few other select riffs. It must have worked as I didn't hear the door bell after that.......
I don't recall any properly weird neighbours however at my last London flat there was only one other flat that shared the landing with us. The flat would have been worth maybe £1M or so, plus it had 2 parking spaces - one of which contained a BMW M5 and the other a Bentley coupe. We lived in our flat for 2 years and in all that time no-one every actually lived in the other flat, although cleaners visited every week and the cars were taken away to get valeted every couple of weeks. Going by the private number plates on the cars I'm assuming the flat was owned by someone from the Middle East that had enough cash that they owned properties in lots of locations that they never got round to using. Lots of money to have tied up in a place and cars you never use though.
The flat I had before that one was in a nice modern block in Greenwich, with parking in the basement. One of the parking slots had a succession of very expensive cars using it (including the occasional Ferrari or Lambourghini) and I could never work out if it was a pied-a-terre owned by a very rich family and used for brief visits by various family members, owned by a specialist car dealer bringing his work home with him - or whether the apartment was possible owned by a high-end call girl and the parking space used by her various overnight customers.
I think my current neighbour is probably the weirdest. It's a rented properly, tiny little 2 bedroom cottage, in which she lives with her mother & got know how many dogs. They have a tiny land locked rear garden, which looks like a rubbish dump if I can be bothered to peep over the fence & it smells like a dog sh*t bin in the summer. They sit out there in it, having a BBQ and smoking weed. It's one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen.
I'm not 100% sure she works, as she's very nocturnal. I know the mother does, but no idea doing what.
About 4 months go now I had to call the police, and the letting agent. Because she's a tramp, and has no respect for others, occasionally they get a bit rowdy with parties - for the most part I don't mind & let it slide as i'm asleep, but we were woken up at about 2am on a Monday morning to what I can only assume was the sound of her chopping wood in the bedroom. This went on for 30 minutes. So we banged on the wall. At this point, she literally lost her sh*t, on an epic scale. Started screaming, threatening to kill my girlfriend and me, throwing glasses and plates at the wall - this went on for about 45 minutes. Called the police, called her letting agents, all logged. She had a visit the next day from both & she's been like a church mouse since.
She's almost as mad as the last woman who was there before, who smashed a bar stool over her partner whilst he was asleep in bed one night. She also had the loudest, worst sex I think I've ever heard.
I want a detached house next.