Love Thy Neighbour.

We are getting new neighbours. A seriously large van appeared in our street last week; the family across the road filled it with their furniture and drove off behind it out of the road. Yesterday, a different and not so serious van appeared and unloaded furniture into the newly vacant house causing much speculation on our part. The previous neighbours were a quiet, unassuming family who caused no problems despite the fact that there did seem to be rather a lot of them. Rather than knocking the door with a freshly baked apple pie to welcome the new arrivals, my wife and I sat and brooded about what kind of inconveniences they would cause us.

The fact that people move because of neighbours is well documented.
I know of a case where a neighbour with a shared drive put his rubbish out and the gentleman who lived next door was so aggrieved because one of the black sacks was partially on his half of the drive that he called the police. I also know of a court case involving a rotten fence and a wind chime.

The worst case I ever came across involved a lovely, elderly couple who lived in a well-kept semi- detached. Many years ago they had bought a substantial part of the neighbour's garden in addition to their existing land. They were very proud of this garden and spent many hours working on it. The gentleman who sold them the garden died, his house was put on the market and sold to a young family. Within two days of moving in, the father had ripped down the fence and reinstated the original garden. When the elderly couple complained they were faced with a hail of abuse and threats of the direst consequences if they touched the fence. The police were not interested saying it was a civil matter. They took the matter to court, the father was given many opportunities to remove the fence by the judge but failed to comply and was eventually jailed for a month. The father stated he would rather go to prison than see his children deprived of their garden. The elderly couple who had been robbed of their pride and joy became too traumatised to go out into their own garden. I spoke to the offender, he was polite, well spoken and had a responsible job with one of the London councils. His argument, which he passionately believed, was 'why should an old couple have a large garden while his children could only have a small garden' he was completely oblivious to the legal argument or the fact that he should have bought a house with a bigger garden. Your just can't reason with some people. This went on for at least two years and I didn't find out the final outcome.

On the lighter side, there was an occasion when my elderly neighbour disappeared for about six months. My wife and I convinced ourselves he had died. Imagine her shock when she went to hang out the washing and there he was, hailing her from his garden as large a life. We are still laughing about it.

As for our new neighbours, they only seem to have one car which is a newish mini cooper so don't anticipate parking issues and they are not adjacent to our house so initial impressions are favourable.