Paperjam

Letter from... Neighbours from hell

Rant // Vanessa // 23rd October 2005

The only thing I have ever wanted when I owned my own house was nice neighbours….I should have realised that moving into a social housing area kind of limited my chances a little bit. But, trying to be the optimist, I decided that social housing people can’t be all that bad.

Three months of hard slog, drilling, sawing, dust and banging we heard no complaints from our Council neighbours. In a terrace house that is pretty amazing. I began to get comfortable with the idea of living in an area that was so peaceful and accepting.

That was until two weeks ago when one of our neighbours decided to practically jump over the fence and threaten to rip frustrated husband’s face off. You can imagine what that did. Handling the situation perfectly well, frustrated husband did what came naturally and told the neighbour to pig off (in not so polite language).
Now believe me when I say that I had never seen a man look so maniacal. He was straining so much his face was flaming red, his eyes were popping out of his head and…well, he basically looked like a colourful version of the zombies in the Land of the Dead. A toothless ignoramus.

The problem, to be fair, was completely out fault. Without realising it, the dust created when we were working in the garden sawing, sanding and stuff, was apparently flying over the fence and onto his freshly washed clothes. Now, if it was me, I think I may have mentioned this earlier, BEFORE it got to the stage when I wanted to kill my new neighbours. But that would be civilised, and you can't really expect that where I will be living. After all, we were able to buy a three-bedroom house for a relatively good price (considering the stupid house prices at the moment).

Anyway, frustrated neighbour (as we will now call him), stuck his head over the fence and in no uncertain terms let off steam. Did we have no consideration? We killed two of his Koi with the dust (apparently), and couldn’t we take the sanding inside? It doesn’t sound bad, but his (lack of) tact and diplomacy added to the shock value. And after frustrated husband told him where to go, the Neanderthal came stomping over to our back garden and made his rather frightening threat.

All the while, frustrated husband (realising his mistake), and parents-in-law tried to calm this thing down. Where was I? Still standing by the door I was sanding, shaking like a leaf and pathetically squeaking, ”please stop!”

Anyway, trog went back to his house (and his moody wife) and we heard no more. Like the good people we are, we took our sanding inside and tried to carry on. Except that I was still shaking and the waterworks started…. “I don’t want to live here anymore!” I wailed like a spolit child…”All I wanted was nice neighbours...”

I got over it – eventually. We decided that seeing as the neighbours had actually been very patient with us (we had been a pain in the arse for over three months), we should go over and apologise and also grovel for forgiveness for the behaviour of frustrated husband. We did both, and were reassured that it was only the dust that was peeing everyone off, not the noise…If it was me, the noise would have driven me around the bend after two days). But oh well, we can carry on making noise!

I am guessing that we can expect a few more outbursts such as this, and our peaceful married life in our new home is not likely to be a fairytale. After all, if you buy a house in an area that is full of people who get their houses for free, what can you expect?