The above picture shows most of our house and our nice neighbours to the left. The 'other lot' are part of our semi-detached house. Worse luck to have to share bricks & mortar with those rotten excuses for human beings. Before I go any further I'll apologise in advance for the amount of venom I may inadvertently spit into this blog post. I like to think I'm a fairly chilled out friendly person these days. I don't hassle people, they don't hassle me, I like being friendly and smiling at people, give compliments and generally be nice. These worthless individuals however bring out my worst feelings of hate and I've often told myself that should one of them drop dead at the end of their drive that I wouldn't even bother to step out my door. It's a very destructive and depressing feeling and it's been brought on over 5 years of on & off mental torture by those losers. I'd like to think that if actually faced with the situation that I'd react like most people and rush to help. Maybe one day I'll find out. I know I'd be happier within myself if I chose the 2nd option. I've really thought about this far too much haven't I.
This was what the houses looked like a couple of years ago before we had finally had enough of them arguing with us over the fence and glaring through our windows as we watched TV. There is now a 6ft fence down their side blocking their view of our downstairs windows as they walk up their path. It was the only solution we could think of as any form of tree or bush we may have planted in it's place would've ended up poisoned. I'll get into that later. The woman is a complete spoiled bully and has been all her life according to those in the area who knew her in her younger years. From what we know of her she wasn't wanted by her mother, which would explain her hideous and unusual name, and spent most of her childhood years being spoiled rotten by her grandmother. This seemingly created a wanton monster that MUST always have her own way at anyone's expense. As far as her sly and sneaky husband goes we know very little about him and his background. We've discovered in our time living here that he's one of those that will often be diplomatic to your face but then plot your demise behind closed doors. He's also ridiculously arrogant. Lovely couple eh?
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So, for the first 6 months or so living in our house we were quite civil and even friendly with them. Well, we didn't know them and both Clare and I are outwardly friendly people so we just got on with it as you do. The problems started with an issue over parking as alot of neighbour disputes do. When we moved here my work van was a small Citreon Berlingo, same size as a Ford Escort van or an estate car. I was told that the work van fleet were all being changed for Ford Transits. When I found this out I mentioned it to our mentally troubled neighbour and since it was a bigger van I offered to park the van at the bottom of the drive so she didn't have to see a big company logo when she looked out of her lounge window. Not something I needed to do but just a friendly gesture. I'd heard a rumour at work they may have been reinforcing the van locks, as they did on the old vans to cut down on break-ins so I mentioned this to her as well and said as soon as this was done I would start parking off the drive so as not to block her view.
The 'arguing' fence. Oooooo!
Time passed, nothing materialised and it was forgotten. One day at work I got a call from my supervisor telling me there had been a complaint to my manager by my neighbour about where I park my van at night and that it was parked on a 'shared drive and blocking her view of the park.' She couldn't even ask me to my face but preferred to potentially land me in shit with my manager instead. Nice!! Luckily my manager and supervisor realised they were dealing with an interfering busy body and since the van was actually parked on my drive and not a shared or public space then there wasnt a problem. When I got home that day I found her and my wife and our other neighbour arguing over the fence. Our good neighbours cant stand them either. Clare had confronted her face to face and caught her off guard, clearly she didnt expect us to say anything directly to them. After that all pleasantries were abandoned and the evil staring through the windows started, and damn is she ugly too!
Things are usually pretty quiet in the Winter months as we're all inside and there's very little risk of antagonisation from either side as it's always dark and we don't see each other. It tends to be the Summer months when they start dictating and playing their sneaky tricks. It was one such Summer when they were walking up their drive staring through our window so in a split second of exasperation I flicked a V sign in their direction. Well she saw it didn't she, told her dopey husband and he came back to shout through our window at us. How dare we swear at them when they're discretely invading our privacy! How very dare we! We came outside and another row started over the fence, joined soon by our other neighbours wondering what all the shouting was about. Eventually after a good half hour of metaphorical mud slinging it all calmed down again, half hearted and insincere apologies were offered and we reverted back to our previous routine of ignoring each other and getting on with our lives. The ugly stares continued from time to time but the worst was yet to come.
Boundary lines before their redesign
The following Summer while the usual tensions built up as the weather improved we looked out to notice the two of them measuring and spray painting yellow lines across what was part of the turning space for all three houses. This was a constant cause of argument between us as their 2 adult daughters were constantly parking their cars all over their side of the turning area making it impossible for cars to effectively turn off the drive without reversing all the way back to the road. Another example of their completely selfish 'Im alright Jack' mentality. When we confronted them about why they were spray painting the path they took great delight in telling us that they were 'boundary lines' and the council had sold them the land so it was no longer to be used by anyone but them. Where they got the cash for that we have no idea but we can hazard a few guesses. A dodgy insurance claim over the supposed burglary of a £15k engagement ring earlier in the year and a very very strong smell of cannabis plants a few months earlier suddenly made sense. Set of sneaky bastards!
An act of vandalism that same night stirred things up even more as a petrol bomb was thrown through the back window of their car while it was on the drive. Clare and I woke up to see an orange flickering reflection on our curtains, we looked out and saw flames coming from their car. Bloody hell! Looks like we're not the only ones who don't like them. Naturally we all got the blame, I mean as if we'd set fire to a car next door and endanger our own property, and we were told in no uncertain terms the following day, Clare's birthday, that 'things are going to start happening around here!'.....and they did too. Over the following weeks Jake's living Christmas Tree was poisoned with detergent, my car window got smashed & burgled twice, the bumper got cracked while on the drive and my van tyre mysteriously blew out one night while on the drive. Other stuff happened to our other neighbours too but I won't bother going into that. I think you get the idea.
After this it was time to put up some deterrents in the way of security lights, CCTV cameras front and back, 2 new fences to block their view onto our garden and a redesign of the driveway with lockable gates to keep the bastards out. To a certain degree it's worked but it didn't stop that silly cow from having a 30 minute verbal at Clare one morning about something as stupid as Clare 'deliberately' splashing her window while she was watering her plants. Does the woman do a Basil Fawlty and shout at the sky when it rains too? Mad thoughts! Anyway the whole episode was caught on camera, even when the stupid cow went toe to toe with Clare and threatened to 'smash her face in'. Our usual helpful police lady was informed as she'd dealt with all our previous problems with these idiots and enough evidence was gained to slap a nice big harassment order on her. Lovely!
That was a couple of years ago now and they've been pretty quiet since. We freshened up the back garden last year and the idiot tried to report us to the police for criminal damage as we'd painted our side of his fence with brown weather protective paint. How pathetic can a person get? Other than that not much to speak of. Not until yesterday when we discovered she'd started poisoning plants again. One of Clare's flowers in the back corner of the front garden, the one next to their porch window has gone very brown and lifeless. On watering it yesterday afternoon it started to froth up, exactly what our poor Christmas tree had done when we tried to save it. So she's at it again!
What to do now then eh? We have an idea and as usual it'll just work out worse for her. She glared through our windows, we put a fence up and blocked her view. She verbally and physically threatened Clare and got a harassment order on her CRB record for her trouble. When we put the new fence up we left their porch window porch clear of obstruction but if she wants to continue to push us with her petty amusements then it's getting blocked off. Tough shit mrs! I'll post a picture on here when it's done. :)
Edit: Just finished our new project, let's see what they try to do about this!
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