How good are your neighbours

Handy being mates with the local bike thief eh thestabiliser? 😛

I think we’re pretty lucky really, we live on a small development with a lot of older, retired folks in. They must have been dreading it when a 21yr old and 19yr old bought the house next door. When we got the house we turned it into a building site for 18 months on and off which can’t have been easy for them but they never really grumbled. Since its been finished we’ve always made an effort to give them a hand with stuff etc.

Norman next door is a nosy old sod but is a brilliant neighbour really, always signs for parcels and lends me any garden tools I need. In return I help out with his tech problems and help out with his grandkids if need be (they do run him ragged).

The other side keep themselves to themselves which suits us fine and the ones opposite are mostly the same.

Oh and John (the oracle) who knows all the going ons in the village and puts our bins away for us when they’ve been emptied.

Sssshh, he’s twocking me a pump and some tubeless sealant, today!

We live on a small village green, most people are fine & we can stop & chat to them, there is a small flat setup where there are some more senior citizens who are the neighbourhood NIMBY’s and moan about everything, to everyone. They tend to be ignored.

Our immediate neighbours on one side we barely talk to, other than the wife takes the odd parcel for us, they’ve been there a couple of years now. They have a couple of screaming toddlers, so we tend to avoid them.

The other side we’ve got some new neighbours, they seem nice, and will pop round for a chat to say hello, and are pretty sensible with the noise, smoke a bit of pot & like to sit out in the garden drinking until late but it doesn;t bother us at all 🙂

The previous neighbours were brilliant in that house – young couple who were obviously in their first house. The girlfriend was a certified nut job. I think she had aspirations of becoming a porn star, albeit a bad one. They went at it, like rabbits at 110 decibels, at random times of the day and night.

The neighbours on the other side came & complained to us about it, so they could obviously hear it too.

As well as liking to f*ck loud, they liked to fight loud too. Screaming rows at 2am was the norm. It only lasted 4 months thankfully. When they moved out, the blokes parents came to apologise, as he was so embarrassed to even face us. Apparently she smashed a kitchen chair over him whilst he was asleep in bed one night 😯

She wasn’t even hot.

Sssshh, he’s twocking me a pump and some tubeless sealant, today!

Does he happen to have a spare YT Capra lying around?

i’m not sure yet; only lived in my house for 3 months so far. on one side, the bloke seems to be a good sort, friendly enough and quiet but his partner has never even smiled, let alone said anything to me and i can usually hear her nagging him for ages and ages on weekend mornings through the adjoining wall between my bedroom and theirs. he just lets her get on with it seemingly!
the other side, i’ve barely even seen them but can hear their kids legging it around the house and all 3 of their cats like walking into my house if i leave the kitchen door open for more than a few seconds. not great when you’re as allergic to them as i am!
further away, there’s plenty of cycling types in my street but it’s not massively surprising given that i live 5 mins ride away from rivington village and all of the lovely west pennine moors roads and trails…

wallop – Member
The mentions from the Bristol residents have reminded me – when I used to live in ‘posh’ parts (ie Clifton or Westbury Park), the neighbours wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire. In BS3 now – much nicer.

This. Grew up in Clifton / Redland, moved south of the river 25+ years ago. Much nicer and friendlier.

House next door to us (semi) is rented and had various people in there during the 14 years we’ve lived here, mainly Poles. All been great, no issues at all.

I cannot speak highly enough of our neighbours – especially the older man directly next door. We live in an end-of-terrace on a cul-de-sac, and with as many kids as I have, we can be pretty loud sometimes.

From the day we moved in and I was doing some work with power tools, we went next door to apologise to him, and to let him know that, if we were disturbing him in any way, he just had to let us know, and we would adjust our activity. In any case, he told us then that we never had to worry about it, and any time I have talked to him since, he has only reinforced this.

When my kids are outside playing, he watches out for them, and he never makes demands on us. Consequently, our lives are richer for living where we do, and at the very least we try to buy him a fruit basket (or something) every once in a while. 🙂

We live in Cumbria and my next door neighbour lives in Southampton so it doesn’t get much better than that. She is even very nice when she is around which is about four days every other month. My next nearest are really great, four pleasant kids on is the same age as ours, we help each other with jobs on the houses etc.

We used to live in Langwathby and that was hell we had to get out. They say every village has an idiot but that place had five and they all lived near me.

I used to have a great neighbour – old bloke, widower, ex-copper, nice to chat to, perfect really. Unfortunately he had a stroke last year and has been in a home since, and his son (also a nice guy, but lives in Brussels) has put his house on the market… apparently my new neighbours are exchanging contracts tomorrow. So slightly concerned, after a year of complete peace… But generally speaking most people are fine, so not too worried.

The family on the other side are a bit weird, keep themselves to themselves mostly, but apart from owning 5 cars they’re fine. We exchange the Spanish equivalent of “Morning!” and “How’s life?” when we see each other, but that’s it.

So a no-score draw at the moment.

Generally good, although the bloke from the couple next door is very OCD. Not normally an issue but he has recently removed one of the two braces holding up my twin wall chimney so he can brick up the gap on his side of the loft 👿 Not worth making an issue of since my builder will come back and sort it. Reckon in another 12 months he’ll be too decrepit to get up into the loft 🙂

I’m in London and was lucky enough to move into a street next to Doreen, a resident for 50!! years.She’s 80 year old now & she’s off walking in Exmoor this week. Third walking holiday this year! She lets me use her lawn mower ,I don’t have one so i there’s more room in the shed for bikes.
The price for this is I have to listen politley while she tells me cyclists are dangerous when she is driving….ha.

I live in the centre of Cambridge in a terraced Victorian House. Quite an eclectic bunch of neighbours, 20 years ago the area was out of fashion and dirt cheap, so a house could be bought for £60k, now nowhere in town is cheap and the houses go for £600k. I pretty much know all my neighbours on both sides of the road +/- 6 houses. They are a mix of retired OAPs, early retired photographer bumming about, security guard with two very viscous dogs, two University lecturers, student house (undergrads), a few shared houses (Post Grad / young professionals), IT Guy, organic bread baker…

Thankfully ours are pretty good which came in handy the day one of them turned up at the front door with a huge box with “SPANK” written across it. Despite me insisting it was a set of wheels and offering to open the box as proof they were happy to walk away with a wry smile!

We lower the tone of our neighbourhood. When mrs aracer went into labour for the second time we dropped off mini-aracer #1 with next door neighbour – get on very well with them and their kids play with ours, but actually I’m sure the neighbours the other side would have happily looked after him as well, and I can think of another couple of families within a few doors who would also help out on a similar level. We sometimes feed their rabbits when they’re away, and I’ve helped fix bikes for several neighbours.

Though of course we also currently have Bovis as one of our neighbours 😥

Nice couple one side – very helpful, he cuts the hedge for us, told me to go to A&E the other day when I was still umming and erring…

Other side is typical miserable old Yorkshire f*****. His main sport, apart from ignoring my wife when he passes her in the street, is to shout at his sick wife whenever he’s not in the pub.

I’ve had my place on the coast now for 21yrs, it’s in a quiet cul-de-sac. I’ve 6 houses around me and all have been chatty enough but quiet enough to keep themselves to themselves. They all have kids and I’ve seen them grow up as they all play outside on the grass together, been a joy really TBH.

All apart from one year when I had a new neighbour next door…Young lad bought the place, clearly couldn’t afford it on his own so got his mate in to share. During that year we had umpteen friday nights of after pub close outs and parties and what not. I was away for most of that year working but when I got home I just wanted to crash out.. couldn’t because of the noise. Anyway after about 6mths of this I got fed up of asking them to quieten it down and one Sat eve during a 2am party I got the hose out and squirted it over the fence at them. Then stood there with it right in one of their mates faces whilst he was having a go at me. I stood my ground. It ended badly and the police were called, luckily my other neighbour was a policewoman who worked shifts a lot and she’d had a word with them a good few times too.. Anywhoo, it quietened down after that until one weekend when their alarm went off whilst they were away, I called the police who called the firebrigade who filled the box up with expanding foam. They came home to some rather angry neighbours and one by one we kinda ganged up on him and his wonky mate.
He sold up in the end, his wonky mate moved in over the road for a while but got bored soon enough. We exchanged sideways glances for a couple of months after that. The place got sold on again to Scottish couple who were nice, now theres a nice young family there and it’s great to hear laughing kids enjoying themselves. Its the only place since the houses were built thats had more than one owner/family in, all the others have the original owners in them.

….

A suburb of Chatham.
One side old, deaf and very nosy/bored, but he make this noise when he clears his throat that sounds exactly like Beavis, I struggle to keep a straight face when he does it in person.

Other side have young kids and make a bit of noise but are very pleasant.

Mine are great, they put up with sometimes a lot of noise (have mates over at the weekend for pre drinks and such if I’m off plus I have a drum kit) – I don’t push it too far though! They fixed and painted my fence when it was blown down in the wind and would only accept the money just to cover the materials despite me offering on top of that! Pretty lucky and I’m glad they don’t seem to mind my loud music and stuff. Well I hope not anyway… I told them when I first moved in to let me know if I was too loud rather than them suffering in silence!

Isn’t it great – all the positive replies. I’m a firm believer that on the whole we live in a great land of friendly people. It’s the stirring by the media of writing negative news that makes people think there are heaps of ‘bad’ people out there…

I reckon most people are actually quite nice. The thing to bear in mind about anything you see or read in the media is that things which happen every day don’t make the news.

Murdered old boys hedge with trimmer this arvo and he gave me a bottle of champers as a thank you! 😀

5 times an hour seems a bit much. Do you get nights off?

next to the tram line 😀

I live right on the village green (no road in between) and my allotment is alongside the green. People in this town are incredibly friendly and laid back as are my neighbours. A friend (brewer, inventor of JHB beer, musician) is moving in the other side of the green. I average about 5 ‘hellos’ between my spot and the square about 150 paces away. There’s always people to chat with at the pub. Problem is various surveys have put the county at no.1 and the town at no.6 in the country on various criteria and I shouldn’t like to see the weekend cottagers move in. Good neighbourhoods make you happier, healthier, live longer and sadly for all sorts of reasons they are becoming rarer. Going by encouraging comments on here they do still exist (but need to be worked at). I’m off today for a second day serving at the beer festival in the next town, morris dancing on Sunday and Feast committee meeting soon. I shall be leaving bags of vegetables on doors and fences before going on holiday. Happy daze.

mostly retired people around us (quiet road in Farnborough, Bromley) the old boy next door (we’re semi-detached) is fantastic.
We’ve got a shared lawn across both properties, the day we moved in he knocked on the door and said ‘Hi, I’m George from next door, and I’ll do the lawn, OK’
5 years down the line and he is still cutting our front lawn ;o)
We help him out, and he does the same – to the extent that he was happy for us to remove the joint chimney stack on our house so we could do a loft conversion.

The guy the other side is a bit weird – he’s been there 3 years and actively avoids us. My wife used to think he was just shy, but now thinks he is bloody rude. I’m convinced he is in the witness protection program or similar.

Most of the rest around here are pretty friendly/chatty.
I don’t particularly like the chavvy woman who’s garden backs onto ours – mostly because I’ve heard her in the garden on her mobile, loudly complaining about how noisy my kids are!