The trouble with neighbours

Or perhaps he's a psycho, like the whackjobs my parents live next to.

x-post

An elderly neighbour probably called the police when it happened. They do things like that.

That's not just parenthood, that's mental imbalance.

argh xpost

YOU FUCKING CUNTS

THANK YOU

As for sleeping kids- you should see me when I'm left to watch my neice. I've been known to sit on the sofa & not move at all untl my sister comes home for fear of waking up the baby. Last time I watched her & she woke up, I had to hold her -screaming her lungs out, of course- for 2 hours. She's such a sweet little toddler, but oh man, those lungs. Of course, the lesson you could get from this too is that I shouldn't do so much free baby sitting for my sister's kid. At least until the kid learns to stay asleep a bit better.

My neighbours are just fucking idiots. They frustrate me because they have idiot friends who condone and support their idiocy.

I think I may have told the story on ilx before, but I was once woken at 3am by them having a good old sing-along to Oasis' "Wonderwall". Just great. I stuck my head out the window and said "Would you mind turning that down or off? I'm trying to sleep here." The facetious cunt yelled up at me "We have to put up with your music all the time!" and I said "Yeah, well you've never complained before and I never play it at 3am in the morning, do I you stupid fucking twunt?!" Most satisfying.

anyway, I'm sort of wondering whether I should try and talk to him (or his partner, whom my parents talked to every now and then) bcz it ended badly last night.

x-post: yeah colette, its the kind of thing I'm thinking of; its awkward, but i think it will have to be done.

any way, good luck. its a horrible feeling i know.

Argh, friend (male) phoned this morning in sleep-deprived panic attack cz the guy in the flat above was being noisy all night and at 6am woke him up by pounding on his door. When friend answered, dude was stark naked in communal hall, pushed past him into his flat, and ran round looking in all the rooms shouting about his guests hiding from him.

Is there anything you can do about that except hope the guy (who's been mostly an OK neighbour but rowdy at night a lot lately) is embarrassed and calms down? Naked dude rents and the flats have a management company, so that's two people who could be complained to, but I don't know if that would achieve anything except possibly escalating nastiness.

nah get him turfed out, pronto.

yeah I mean you could have him arrested for that, let alone turfed out of the flat.

we have a phrase in my country to describe incidents such as this: "ah now that's no way to be carrying on"

"STEADY ON, NOW"

"ah for jaysus sake"

Last night my downstairs neighbour threatened to kill me. He wasn't joking and is a decidedly unsalubrious character, with what I guess to be some kind of drug problem (mebbe coke as there's no heroin-type sickly smell). I probably shouldn't have sung along to my Richard Youngs' CDs for quite so long that afternoon... :-(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh4DstK2w_Q

I had a neighbour go after a friend of mine with a hammer once. Like, chased him back into our flat trying to hit him in the head. Turns out someoen *else* had been revving/idling their car engine right outside this guys window for ages, and my awful timing, P went to get into his car to leave, angry man comes out, sees P in his car and jumps to wrong conclusion and starts chasing him.

We complained to the apartment managers, and ended up having to APOLOGISE TO THE GUY, because he was a fucking shift worker. As if I had any idea? I should have just called the police. I was only 17 or 18 at the time, it scared the shit out of me.

so we got new neighbours. three times in a week the cops have been outside the house, twice looking for her ex in my back garden and this morning investigating the fire that burnt the house to the ground, which was started at both the front and back doors.

i have no idea who my neighbours are. I have never seen them and have only heard them unlocking and going into the doors to their flat(s) (there are two other flats on my floor and i don't know which one(s) i've heard them going into as they are both quite far away down the hall from mine). I never hear any noise coming through the walls when they're in the flat. I don't know if they're extraordinarely quiet or if the walls are really thick. I have never heard noise from either above or below me and through the walls that are adjacent to the flats on the next close I have also never heard anything. It's weird.

i just tried to post something but my internet ate it. it was about homeowners who get all stinkeyed when other people park legally in front of their house, even though the street is public property. this happened to my bf and me this morning -- not in my neighborhood, but somewhere nearby where we've never had any parking trouble before.

like, what was this woman afraid of? her property value going down? a rabid attack by two bleary-eyed thirtysomething hipsters who haven't had coffee yet? that i would trample a very small patch of her meticulously watered and mowed lawn, which she shouldn't even have since we're in a goddamned drought?

Did she come out and yell at you or something? Who does that?

she was just very obviously glaring at us. we parked across the street instead and she was still glaring. people like that are why homeowners' associations have a bad reputation.

It's my experience that although you can always move, and always hope for better neighbors next time, invariably there is some new horror to be discovered. Through the years I've suffered through having neighbors who are either loud with their music past reasonable hours, who have made loud love with the bed banging against our shared wall, and who have whistled incessantly while walking up and down the staircase that was just beyond a door to my bedroom.

Currently my lateral neighbors are fine. I even get along with them rather well. The problem now, however, is the upstairs neighbor, who has what seems like a pack of dogs living in his apartment who like toys that bang on their hard wood floors, and the downstairs neighbor, whose cigarette smoke comes up through the radiator and into the room of my soon to be newborn son.

The next step for me is to move out of the city entirely and get a house, though I am wary of what other kinds of horrors lurk when the scenario changes.

i once had a ticket officer call me to tell me i wasn't supposed to park in front of some assholes house. i had a permit for what turned out to be a different part of the road so when they called and complained instead of giving me a ticket he got my # and rang me to ask me to move my civic.
i guess now it doesn't sounds so weird but at the time it was sort of surreal.

xpost

Smoke coming up through a radiator sounds a bit wrong, is there not something you can do about that? I mean you can hardly fault a man for smoking in his own home but you dont want that near baby obv.

um, so darraghmac - your neighbour's house is now burnt down?!

yes, that's pretty much where we're at with that.

Trayce, I've done a smidgeon of research on it and it looks like it could go either way in terms of the law. I recognize the right of the guy to do what he wants in his apartment (it's a coop), but when it starts to effect someone else, I think the situation might change.

If it keeps happening I'm going to raise the issue to (in order, depending if anything gets done about it) the super, the building management, and finally my lawyer. As it is I have stuffed the space around the radiator with old towels. We'll see if that works.

darragh: yeah I was going to say something... do you assume its this poor woman's ex? Sounds like she moved to get away from him and... ugh. No one was hurt I hope?

nobody hurt, though if she'd been home she wouldn't have had much chance. from what i could glean from the landlord this morning yeah it's exactly that- she's moved to get away from him, even though they've been separated for a while.

Jesus. Does she even know the place is gone yet, has she been back home? I always live in fear of coming home to a detroyed house.

i don't know- she only moved in about a week ago, i've never met her. i think she's probably made herself scarce since wednesday night, which was the last time he was seen hanging around.

Hope they catch the fucker. Ugh thats horrible.

catching him vs proving it was him. strong circumstantial evidence, certainly.

I came to post something but now I want to know the end of darraghmac's story -- mine is abt disagreement about how to resurface a path shared between several blocks and how the person involved who put in least effort to attend meetings or make their opinions known early or clearly is now very belatesly being a d!ck when the work has started, i.e. mildly tiresome stuff involving no shouting, at worst a testy exchange of emails between ppl who otherwise needn't ever interact

ok the situation has evolved a bit -- turns out the uninvolved person has been having quietly to wrangle a difficult slightly frightened old lady who demands everything to be as it always was -- not always an option when you're refashioning something used by many people, and when the crumbling and decaying aspect is the aspect everyone else wants tackled

the builder running the project did a fairly stellar job trying to calm her fears and talk her round but i suspect she will go back into her flat and alarm herself again, and keep her foot put down

i think the beef has been resolved since builders have carried on as they began (ie not dug up the section they laid down yesterday, as was being demanded)

i ended up doing a dull day's work on not enough sleep (it all blew up last night in email, and i worry even when it's not me going to be shouted at) but the completed section of path looks nice from here -- sadly the one cat who looked as if he was going to walk right across it per tradition sniffed at it gingerly and walked round on the flowerbeds

where is darraghmac, i need closure

She never came back, we moved away.

I realise this isnt great closure.

Id Google house fires in my home town but no thanks tbh

fair enough

Every now and then, the upstairs flat throw their cigs out of their window and into our garden. This can irritate the fuck out of me.

it probably irritates the dogs too

er, ha, i read that as "dogs" and not "cigs"

the resident most noisily active to get the paths resurfaced in the fierst place -- she is late middle age, quite unsteady on pins and (i suspect) has aspergers-related balance issues -- is now very vocally cross that halfway through the process the dug-up path is much worse than the path as it used to be (it will be finished in a week)

just heard her say loudly "i can't believe it" (my flat overlooks part of the path)

(i.e. this too will pass:, she is not the worst by any means and i feel for her plight, not being able to balance is p awful: i just sometimes wish "grit yr teeth and soldier on" wd occur to ppl dealing with short-lived processes THEY INITIATED, she is an intelligent person if a bit obsessive)

A bit unbalanced you might say? Sorry.

~post for "posts you didn't even for a second consider posting g to the "posts you had second thought about" thread~

lol it is all kicking off, the block that made least effort to contribute to the process and most fuss about the costs now HAAATE the result and are all angrily piling in proposing extremely expensive cosmetic changes which none of the other blocks want or will agree to

moral: (a) make yr block director turn up to meetings and represent you, (b) if you want it done a different way, do the research and legwork!

also a person and a cat have has already walked in the wet cement

I always think its a tragedy when municipal cement doesn't have graffiti or footprints in it

Especially paw prints.

Yes we asked them to tidy up the humanprint but leave the catprint.

next installment: suspended work now continuing once more, which i assume means angry complainers have been mollified, fingers x-ed this is sorted for now

probably doesn't belong on this thread (and besides i am in two minds abt it, since editing & rewrite are my meal-ticket) but blimey ppl's write-ups of meetings can be useless and unhelpful, how do you get thru adult office/professional life not being to do this competently? and yet many do! (and i am paid to tidy up after them so hey-ho, i don't actually mind this it just baffles me)

i love catprints in cement but spindly bird toe prints are my favourite, they look frail and absurd.

omg neighbour beef opened on a second front: old lady next door -- not part of blocks referred to above -- has someone in removing ivy (fair enough)

the ivy is actually growing up the wall of the recalcitrant block mentioned above (which looms over her garden) and round the side of her house on walls that overlooks my downstairs neighbour's garden -- i just heard her demanding that we and the middle block pay for its removal as a consequence

as far as i can see the roots are mostly in her garden (tbf they might also be round a corner where i can't see, in the garden of the recalcitrant block): anyway as far as i can tell from googling, the main responsibility for dealing with invasive ivy belong to the person whose land the roots are on (which seems definitively NOT to be our block) rather than ppl whose walls it is growing on (also not our block) -- though she is entirely within her rights to request access to cut it back when it's on her house, and the best access is via our garden

our blocks have serial history with this lady, she has more than once tried to get something for nothing before now in various shady instances

(meanwhile paths saga shd be over tomorrow, they have very nearly finished)

there was a huge furore outside my flat this morning - don't suppose you heard it mark? my downstairs neighbour's brother was going absolutely mental - i'd never seen the brother before, but the downstairs neighbour is fairly crazy, guy in his 50s, smokes weed all day, shouts at his wife and kids, probably violent, certainly sounds that way. for about 20 mins (and i left for work as it continued) the brother was outside the flat shouting up at my neighbour "you fucking pussyhole crackhead, come down here and i'll fucking kill you. you insult my wife, you beat your wife, you're a fat dumb cunt, i'm going to fuck you in the bum you pussyhole crackhead."

it was pretty insane - at one point some people tried to reason with the brother, i heard a posh voice say something that included "civilised human beings" in it which basically felt like racism to me. i did for a second think about advising the brother to maybe leave it, given someone was surely bound to call the police.

was a strange morning, knowing what i do of the neighbour, i'm inclined to believe the brother had legitimate grievance, and the ferocity of his anger suggested a long frustration with having such a c*** for a brother. i suggested to my flatmate i go down and pay the brother £20 then let him into the building to do his worst.

yes i did! just as a noise in the distance though, till i realised it had been going on for a LOOOONG time -- can't see that bit of the road from my flat so i went up on the roof to rubberneck, just as the shouting guy got into his car and drove off, laughing in a kind of loudly despairing way :(

laughing in a kind of loudly despairing way

hmm, board description or screen name?

given someone was surely bound to call the police

not i think just for shouting, even prolonged shouting -- there's quite a lot of that (which is why it didn't really register immediately with me)… ppl often yell up and down the passage, coming from or going into the square: the sound bounces right up into my front rooms (which is why i work at the back, where it sounds much further off), and i think most hearing it just shrug and wait for it to move on

(changing demographic may have bearing on this) (haha ie YOU)

haha - this went on for ages though and it was EXTREMELY loud and aggressive - like people were visibly distressed walking past - it was about a half hour of it. i feel like people are okay with indiscriminate street shouting, or even a few minutes of violent verbal barracking, but this was like deep obscenity and profanity over and over and over for 30 mins at about 0830.

A DISGRACE.

We've just moved into a new building and I'm trying to systematically talk to everyone in the surrounding flats and it appears that we have a very low bar to clear because everyone fucking hated the woman who lived there before us.

of the 32 flats in the blocks there are now maybe three whose occupants have lived here longer than me, i realised to my mild distress recently (26 years in november) (and 15 of those an ilxor)

Under 100 posts? I'm a bit surprised this thread isn't one of the top 25 longest threads on ILE.

I've had numerous others on the go over the years

paths update: project completed!

except that one of the other blocks has piped up saying that a small element outside their front door has been completely forgotten (which is true! i had forgotten abt it and so had the contractor -- so they are arguing it out over the phone, i don't think it's a big deal)

however one of the other blocks just gave me a bottle of champagne for all the work i did getting this to happen so i am fairly pro-neighbours currently :)

sometimes a bit of appreciation goes a long way. congratulations on your success.

ok i think the project is complete, all beefs squared all debts paid X[

^ Sounds like a Radiohead lyric.

buy yourself another bottle of champagne (assuming the first is already consumed)

I'm a bit surprised this thread isn't one of the top 25 longest threads on ILE.

Theres a couple other neighbours gripe threads is probably why.

also several dedicated to a long-running soap opera

I live in a pretty placid neighborhood, except for the house directly across from mine. The daughter of the woman who lives there seems to be getting kicked out and taken back in over and over. Sometimes she shows up and bangs on the door and the mother calls the police on her. A couple of times she's parked her car in the driveway and cops have shown up, taken pictures of the car and left.

I was coming home from a walk with baby stroller and the daughter was yelling at a dude. The dude crossed the street to get away from her and she threw a glass candle at him. It shattered all over the place and pieces of glass hit the baby stroller. Dude jumps in his car. Daughter yells at him "I'm the mother of your child and you put your hands on me?" Dude drives off yelling, "Crazy b---"

:O

Did you do anything about it? I would have called the cops on her for the candle thing, esp if it came close to hitting you or your child.

Didn't call the cops. I was going to be the only one with the baby for the next 8 hours so I didn't want to be talking to police etc. Also, it seemed like maybe some domestic violence occurring and I didn't want to add to the misery.

I wouldn't think twice about calling the cops on someone who was so out of control they were throwing things at people in the street, regardless of what they may have been through themselves. But I understand the impulse to not involve yourself in something when you're the only person watching your kid.

Ugh. Junkies are using the landing/roof area outside our flat to shoot up. Found a syringe and a load of mail they'd rifled through up on the roof after my wife told me she heard suspicious noises coming from up there while I was on the way hoe from work. Also found somebody's debit card that's brand new. It's not the first time we've found weird stuff up there, there's been discarded clothing and beer cans and stuff left up there before. My guess is there's a dealer in the building and they go up there to shoot up after they score, because if they lived in the building why wouldn't they just shoot up in their own flat? I called the non-emergency police number and reported it, but I doubt they'll do anything. Felt a bit weird doing it I've never called the police before.

These bastards are there all the time now. We've chased them away at least 5 times but they just come back half an hour later. We've called the police every day and they finally sent some out last night. They made some concerned noises about how disgusting it is to have bloody hankies and needles strewn across the stairs but it's a matter for the building management company. The building management company say it's a matter for the police.

My wife is not handling this well, they are there at all times of the day sometimes we get woken up at 4am by the door slamming. Now we've got no help from anybody she's talking about buying some pepper spray and trying to get rid of them that way. The police say not to confront them but wtf are we supposed to do if nobody will do anything??

Fuck.

My wife just messaged me they're there now and she's called the police again. Our agent says it's not their problem.

Is there any way we can get out of a 6 month contract due to this? I'm guessing no.

Ah man. Hate this shit.

I'd probably advise you to put it to the mgmt co that you consider it reason enough to break the contract and see how they react, or if you're paying landlord rather than them directly apply similar approach there

horrible situation, sorry to hear of your woes CP. does anyone else in the block use the space in question? if not, is there any way of fencing it off? and have you spoken to any of the other residents about it?

I tried ringing Shelter's housing advice line what a load of pointless bullshit that was. Listen to a load of pre-recorded waffle only to be told there are no operators available, end of call. WTF. No waiting on hold, that's just it. You have to call again and listen to their shit on the off-chance there's somebody available, over and over.

The management company refuse to do anything about the door because it's a fire escape and it has to be left open.

Our next door neighbour was aware of what was going on and had already complained to the management company before we did, but he's not home very often. Thing is I have no idea who anyone is in this building and I don't know who the dealer is. I've got a guess because one of the flats has a very sturdy looking lock on the door, but that's not much to go on.

Would think neighbours might be concerned if mail was fond up there, if it is stuff taht was supposed to be getting to them. & at least make sure taht the mail area was better protected.

I just heard from my next door neighbour that she found neighborhood girls had been back hanging out outside her flat, sitting on the wall and stuff. I thankfully haven't seen the face looming over my wall recently which was presumably one of the same girls.

But finding it odd taht that same next door neighbour was perturbed taht kids in teh area took a tv box from under the stairs in a really unprotected area. I'd wondered why it had been dumped there as I saw it for several weeks. There's no weather protection so it must have been getting wet anyway. Odd place to use asa storage area for anything that they realy wanted.
The guy there has now taken to leaving his bike unlocked on the landing halfway up the stairs which also strikes me as odd. Not sure hwo safe anything is. Particularly since the traveller park up which we thought we got rid of returned. & things like taht were walking a lot at the start of the summer which had most of this block up in arms.

is it even legal of the management company to knowingly let people do drugs in the building? wonder if there's a way of pursuing that sort of line of attack xp

Our next door neighbour knows the woman who most of the stolen mail belonged to so he took what was left of it down to her. He said she is quite vulnerable so I doubt she would want to get involved.

The police gave us one possible line which was that they reckon the fire door should not be openable from outside and we may be able to get the fire dept to force building management to do something about that. But I doubt that will do a huge amount of good. They are getting in the building someway presumably because the dealer is letting them in, so all that would mean is if we chase them out (and the police have already told us off for doing that) they can't get back in through that door, but they can just come in through the front door like they'd have to in the first place!

Deems is correct in suggesting that you ask the managing agent whether you can contact the landlord to discuss. Whether or not you can legally break the lease is secondary - you can ask the landlord whether they are willing to let you out of it early and explain your reasons. If the managing agent isn't going to do anything about it, they will need to explain this to the landlord. The landlord may already know, idk, but it may focus the attention of the agent if they have to go back to explain the situation. Another option, alongside this, could be to suggest a solution. An agent can get a CCTV camera installed for about £500, which may act as a deterrent. Doing that vs the hassle of finding new tenants at the end of the six months might work out better for the landlord.

We had a similar situation at an apartment building I lived in: a dealer squatting in an empty apartment and weirdos shooting up in the hallways during winter. There were hookers propositioning me when we went out my door. Lots of tenants complained to management, who did nothing. Then the entire seven storey building burned to ground due to wiring, but management tried to say the junkies must have burned it down to get out of paying us.

Called Citizens Timewasting Bureau, which appears to consist of an elderly woman reading the website I just read that doesn't actually help back to me.

Building management sent someone round to secure the cupboard the junkies are stashing their needles in. The cunts are sticking their needles under the carpet with the sharp end sticking through, so someone could step on them. The cleaner nearly spiked himself on one this morning. They might be people with problems but there's no fucking excuse for that.

The only good news is apparently they know which flat the dealer's in and are trying to evict them, and the police are coming round tomorrow with the letting agents. Having watched enough Nightmare Tenants and Landlords programs though I know it can take 3 months to get people out.

Came home late last night to find junkie woman on the stairs, this time she had a dog (a staffie I think) with her and I think she'd just used because she was pretty out of it. They don't seem to be round as often now but not going away yet. I called the cops and they came round but she was gone by then. Then about half an hour later they were up on the roof again.

Surely the cops have a vested interest in busting a dealer!?

They need evidence. Presumably we are in a Catch 22 because they need evidence for a search warrant and can't get any evidence without searching the dealer's flat.

Even if they do catch a junkie, they told me if they've already shot up they can't arrest them for anything. I'd've thought they could at least do them for some kind of loitering/public order offence, but that doesn't really help them bust the dealer I suppose.

Statements from yourself and the landlord and/or the management company and the circumstantial evidence of all the junkies and repeated phonecalls are surely enough for a warrant??

furious race to get the gear into u before the cops arrive/get their notepads out

fantastic concept

The cops have been pretty useless tbh. On Saturday, my wife called them, told them she could give a description of the 2 that were there, they declined, then when they came upstairs she told them what they looked like anyway, and they said oh, we saw that guy hanging around outside the building, when he saw us he got spooked and left. FFS, maybe you could've tried searching him? I mentioned that to the police that came later on when I called them and they just gave me the spiel about not being able to arrest them unless they've got something on them, but how do they know he didn't have anything on him since they didn't even bother stopping him?

The cops have been pretty useless tbh

Get away.

It occurs to me that if you're having trouble with the Police taking your problems seriously (which sound awful btw, not trying to be glib), it might be worth popping along to your MP's surgery to ask for help? There might be some advantage to having the Home Secretary as yr MP? Just a thought.

Smackheads can be a pain in the arse but we can't go all Duterte on them, they still have civil rights. It probably doesn't help when services for addiction/homelessness have been almost wiped out in recent years. I mean there but for the grace of God go I etc..

I'm planning on doing that Tim, but her next surgery isn't for 3 weeks. Presumably that's the disadvantage of having the Home Secretary as my MP.

Our neighbour built a music space in his garden, which he claimed would be soundproofed, but wasn't, even in the slightest. He endlessly plays some kind of rock music practice programme where he gets to play the riffs alongside the original recording of Sultans of Swing, or some other rock-blues wankfest. Sometimes it's more funny than annoying. But if I want to garden or read outside, it's pretty annoying to hear someone riffcheese to Under the Bridge or whatever.

Anyway it's winter now so we don't go outside, and he's nearer to the other neighbours than us, so I'm sure one of them will murder him first, hopefully before next summer.

Probably more annoying are his kids who are always shouting MUMMY CAN YOU HELP ME at loud volumes and kicking footballs against the face. (Shouting is fine if you're like a six year old, but I think he's a young teen. I am also irrationally prejudiced against children who say "mummy" or "daddy" instead of mum/mom/dad.)

(Against the fence, I mean.)

Tonight's policeman had 2 incidents to attend in our building. As well as us calling because of junkies, someone got assaulted on the ground floor tonight. What fun. This policeman is a bit more conscientious than others, he's actually cleaning up the needles instead of leaving them there.

This is going into neighbourhood watch FB groups territory again and again when you post, you aren't even talking about your neighbours here tbf. I much preferred it when Chuck_Tatum or Mark S had the gavel tbh.

Go fuck yourself you fucking prick

Are people who live in the same building as you not your neighbours? You fucking snide cunt. Sorry this shit isn't entertaining enough for you.

take it to the law and order thread, mr shit.

sorry I understand your concerns and everything, but where I live you talk to people before you phone the police and there are lots of similar problems. But it sounds like you don't consider these people humans as a starting point and expect the police magically make them disappear. It is that shrill neighbourhood watch voice you have that grinds my gears a bit, you don't need to be so hypersensitive though.

where I live you talk to people before you phone the police

Fuck this attitude. There are vulnerable people living in this building who are having their shit stolen and are too afraid to complain about it. We aren't, at least not enough not to. But you expect us/them to ask a dealer who has had people assaulted nicely to please stop doing it? What fucking planet are you on.

I know first fucking hand how bad services are for mental health, addiction, etc. I am not devoid of compassion, some of the people I see in and out of here I do feel very sorry for, and I know if they get moved on from here they will have to go somewhere else, and that's no solution. That doesn't change the fact that it's directly impacting on me on my wife, who has cancer btw and is having to deal with this right outside her door, 7 days a week, and is afraid to go out on her own. But maybe we aren't humans.

There are vulnerable and dangerous people where I live. Last year a guy across the road from me wondered into the local Asda and slashed someone's throat and I'd had an argument with him a few months previously, so I could have ended up vulnerable myself. I am more moaning about your tone than your situation tbh (which I am not totally privy to all the facts of). It's just a thing that grinds my gears at the moment - where people who are pushed to the margins by austerity become sub-humans and lose all nuance. I probably shouldn't have made the comments without knowing more about your situation though, sorry for that.

Someone actively disrupting a thread to moan about the tone of entirely relevant posts is perhaps not in a position to call someone else 'hypersensitive' and is perhaps in a position to shove it up his arse

thank you for your very "kind" advice, but now you are disrupting the thread tbf.

No, YOU'RE the puppet

CP that sounds crap. I don't have any advice, did the last policeman give any indication about what you could do?

people who are pushed to the margins by austerity become sub-humans and lose all nuance.

You know I accept this and I know what you mean and I (perhaps mistakenly) thought I'd kept away from using words that could have that connotation (unless the word junkie itself means that, substitute it for heroin addict if you wish). I honestly don't know what you've picked up on in my tone in that sense, I don't want these people strung up, I wish they could get help, I wish we could all get help.

I guess I did call them cunts, but I called you a cunt too.

kinder, all the police say is they have to build intelligence to get a warrant to bust the dealer, and we just have to keep phoning them because it builds a case. So that's what we will have to do. Maybe now other people in the building are calling them as well it will get bumped up in priority.

I probably am a cunt! Where I live it's extremely crime ridden and as a consequence there is an almost continual police presence. When my kid went missing they found him in 20 mins because they were already all in the area! Anyway I wouldn't have posted what I did last night if I had known a bit More about CP's situation and I have apologised. Let's just leave it there eh?

I often see an old friend of mine in the area and he currently is in a very bad way. He isn't a bad person, he is a pisshead and a bit of a fantasist who often amusingly tries to talk himself up as a top dj. He is currently homeless and sofa surfing, he recently got the shit kicked out of him at one of the houses he was staying at. There are 5 strict criteria to get on the housing list and being free of rent arrears is one of them. Because obv people with rent arrears have deliberately made themselves homeless. Whereas this other nice person from the neighbourhood whose own parents have a restraining order against him (he held his dad hostage at knife-point for drug money), when he was released from his 2nd custodial sentence was put into sheltered accommodation for 12 weeks until he got a flat in quite a posh area. I was just thinking about how the system here is disenfranchising a decent but vulnerable person and assisting a repeat violent offender, and possibly how some of CP's nice neighbours got there.

The trouble with thread neighbors

This got worse before it got better but we are out of here on Monday, thank fuck. I actually feel sorry for our landlady which means it must be bad. She doesn't want to rent the flat out again until it's sorted and I don't see that happening anytime soon. We're lucky she felt pity for us due to my wife being ill and let us out of the contract.

A few weeks ago the police raided the dealers' flat and arrested 2 people on drugs and weapons charges. People have been threatened with guns and knives so in some ways we've not had it as bad as others in the building, I've only had verbal. Since then I assume they are out on bail because it's not been 7 days a week, mainly just weekends and the odd day in the week that they've been up here. Has been picking up a bit in the last week so maybe they think they've lain low long enough, so glad we're getting out. My wife's just got out of hospital last night so hope it's not too bad for the few days we've got left. Feel for the people in the building who maybe don't have an option. Spoke to next door neighbour last night, he's been away for a while on work and he told me he's moving to Eastbourne to get away from it. He told me there's an entry code for the front door (I don't even know it) and the local junkies all know it and the management company refuse to change it because last time they did someone kicked the front door in. Maybe they did change it because someone did break in the front door window a couple of weeks ago. That was a weird night. Someone set off the fire alarm that night as well. We thought maybe it was rival dealers trying to flush them out or something.

Anyway a few more days and this'll be over and I can stop whinging about it (will no doubt whinge about something else, sorry in advance).

with some buildings the fire alarm will override the entry system, so if you set the alarm off it releases the electronic locks. it's a safety thing so that emergency services can gain access iirc

glad you've got things sorted and good luck w/ the move!

Really glad to hear you're getting out of this, CP, and yes, good luck with the move, it sounds like you deserve some.

Really hope the move goes well and you and your wife are able to enjoy a peaceful xmas.

ffs I knew we wouldn't be able to make it to Monday without incident. Cunts've been back stealing mail, there's torn open envelopes littered around the building and looks like somebody pissed in the lift.

To add insult to injury the fucking cunt management scum are retiling our roof with no notice have moved all our stuff on the balcony and hammering away all fucking day long. They'll do up the outside of the building which doesn't even look that bad while the inside rots. They've not asked permission to do this can I call the cops and say they're trespassing?

I know it's off-subject for this thread, but it's impossible to read through this without thinking how destructive the criminalisation of drugs really is. Addicts are not inherently evil people, but it can seem that way after a century of futilely fighting "drug-related crime" that is really drug criminalization-related crime. Read the above, and then imagine how much safer the neighbourhood would be if heroin junkies could peacefully get their fix from a legal dispensary rather than from thuggish street dealers waging turf wars. And allow the medical community to address drug dependance, rather than pretending that throwing addicts into prison will ever make addiction go away. (/-rant)

Anyway, glad you're moving out & best wishes for your wife and for yourself.

so last night about a quarter to midnight i hear this major commotion from the flat below - like a man roaring at the loudest possible level, unintelligible roaring, and stuff being smashed, doors slamming, a woman's voice answering etc, only snippets of conversation like "you paki bitch". then there's like howling and crying, from the man, more smashing stuff, more roaring, and more answers. it got so violent-sounding that i called 999. the police arrived and i could hear them knocking on the door etc, then they came up the stairs and knocked on my door, and asked me if i called the police, with the neighbour in question within earshot up the stairs, where he'd been hiding, i think. i said yes, as quietly as i could and they said they wanted to come and talk to me about what i heard, and they would shortly.

so they never did that, which was annoying as i stayed awake for a bit. i heard them questioning him more, then eventually they went. this morning i made a complaint about the fact they'd taken no care to keep me anonymous. the duty officer rang me, and though he was very helpful and apologetic, i couldn't believe how much he played down the incident. like he was basically saying i don't have to worry too much based on their report, because they hadn't arrested him or they hadn't "got to the bottom of" any major incident happening. and he kind of said "people have different lives and what's acceptable in one house isn't acceptable in another" - i had to stop him a few times to explain the amount of times i've heard domestics in london and not called anyone, and the difference on this occasion in that i literally called 999 because it sounded so violent and unhinged that somebody could be killed. i also explained i heard his officers saying "we had reports of a woman matching your wife's description running down the street crying"

he actually said, as way of explanation: "it might seem shocking but from our point of view you come to consider these things as normal"

find it pretty awful on the police side. i guess i'm not too worried about my neighbour confronting me or making trouble for me, but i still would prefer he didn't know it was me who rang the police. if he does say anything to me i think i'll just deny it. i thought of a few other approaches but i don't want to respond in any other way that involves me having to be conciliatory or understanding about the fact he's a violent fucking cunt.

fuckthepolice.mp3

seriously, that is a shitty way for the police to handle just about everything - the last thing you should hear from authority when you bring something to their attention is 'you come to consider these things as normal'. acknowledging that the situation is abnormal but that you basically dgaf anymore should be grounds for disciplinary action

police can be such aliens in dealing with civilians. My brother-in-law, who lives down the street from me, has twice been rear ended at high speed when he slowed down to turn into his driveway. He mentioned to one of the responding officers at the second crash that since it was a residential street maybe the speed limit should be 25mph rather than 35, which might cut down on the speed demon-ing. The cop just replied, "No, you are wrong. The speed limit is too low here. It should be 45mph."

'then you'd be dead and another officer would hve to deal with this'

Getting home to some stupid note because the next door neighbour has gone out without her key and come back to find out that the street door was locked . & somehow it's my fault when I've kept the door on the lacth all the time I've been here.
Seems that this person has reached her late 20s and not come across the concept of a latch before. & is insisting that you need to lock the door from outside.
Had sod all to do with me but apparently if the door's locked when she gets home without a key I'm mad and she's out for the taxi fare to get her husband to get the key to her. Not her just being a bit dim.

two (2) sets of em squabbling: in both cases i have been invited in to support one side against the other, in both case the other has sent an extremely reasonable and sensible response which i suspect will not help

however my plan to bang everyone's heads together will possibly also not help

We've got upstairs neighbours who, while not being hideously noisy (ie. they don't listen to drum 'n' bass all night), manage to wake us up all the time (slammed doors, five in the morning chats, curious knocking* and so on). Not really sure what the answer is.

*this isn't a euphemism. They seem to knock loudly on something (as if knocking on a door but not actually knocking on a door).

My neighbors are all GOP cocks

I find most neighbours (as in the ones that aren't dangerous to approach and relatively civil) pretty sound until you talk to them. Sigh.

curious knocking*

Oh-hoh-hoh-hoah
Everybody was kung-fu fighting curious knocking...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvbW7Hx38dU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvRIQMPauUU

he's just looking out, for his kids.

― RJG (RJG), Tuesday, September 28, 2004 5:29 PM (thirteen years ago)

lol i'd forgotten The Story of RJG and the Commas

sad encounter just now in the square with the ex of a neighbour: recently retired, she had been struggling with life (incipient dementia) and her kids had intervened; he had become -- the way everyone but him tells it -- something of a weed-bound freeloader, and the children shut him out and whisked her away to a home

anyway -- having not spoken to me for probably 10 years? -- he took time to explain why everything was bad and wrong except the way he saw it and would have tackled it; i nodded and politely extricated myself from the conversation

i don't know who's in the right, of course, and have no way of knowing, and besides it's not my business -- what was sad was really just the receding echoes of the tangles of the lives of those you once knew, and the sense that sometimes like ghosts they never quite go away

downstairs neighbour woke me up early to say that water was coming through his bathroom ceiling (via the light fitting!), what was happening?

ans = another neigbhour, who i'm paying to do some work in *my* bathroom (laying a new floor), had yesterday driven a screw into a pipe in the heating system, inadvisedly placed too close to the boards that form the floor. the screw had caused a leak, not at all visible from above

pipes and heating all turned off, floor all pulled up (newly laid floor all unlaid again): much email diplomacy and promises it will be fixed tonight

FINGERS CROSSED

ayiyiyi

"inadvisedly placed too close to the boards that form the floor"

I used to always blame the plumbers if screwed into a water/gas pipe as well, what else can you do?

I had that once, seconds after the builders had laid perfect new flooring in my kitchen. They were screwing boxing-in material in place and zapped a pipe. We have district heating in this building so there was a geyser of the foulest oily water that flooded inch-deep in the kitchen and hallway. Contractors tried not to change the MDF boxing-in material even though it sucked up loads of moisture and got tide marks (no you can’t just paint over it, you workshy cretins) and refused to tile half of my destroyed hallway even though I could supply my own materials (they used half my tiles, and refused to believe the existing remaining tiles were blown). AAARGH

the pipe seems to be fixed now -- he said it was fine to turn the heating back on and I have -- and he's downstairs now cleaning up, he thinks there's not much harm done: just let it dry out etc, it's only water. "Don't use the light switch for a day or two." The ceiling will need a bit of work, but I'll let my neighbours talk that out between themselves when the one who lives below me is back from work this evening.

Luckily he hadn't actually fixed the vinyl in place yet and while the floorboards look a mess all pulled up they will go back down again tidily enough, as will the plywood underlay for the vinyl.

he lives round the corner if there is harm done, i can see right into his kitchen from my work-desk

ok the water and electricity and downstairs neighbour's temper all smoothed over

new floor still very extremely unlaid (and won't now be sorted till friday)

It is the plumbers fault really, anywhere cables, pipes are routed through joists at 1/1/2-2 inch screw depth they should be protected by metal joist plates fwiw.

there's quite a lot of weird work in this flat tbh, some i suspect via bad DIY committed by the ppl i bought from in 1990

(a plumber i called in to fix an earlier leak a few years back found two overflow pipes of different sizes fitted into one another with lashings of superglue: he was amused and appalled and found it quite hard to sort out)

lol! that is textbook rough as fuck.

The sort of thing you'd take a picture of for the archive.

ugh the fkn bin wars are started again

the other week I drowned my phone in lager by putting a can that toppled in a very spacious waxy and watertight jacket pocket with it while I was talking to some complete fucking idiot who I didn't want to talk to. I give it to the fix it man across the road who operates as Pete The Geek - the guy who can fix anything and said to him don't do any major surgery on it I've already got a replacement on the way but maybe just a quick expert brushing will get it operational enough to get my contacts, photos and stuff onto the new phone.

He disappeared for a week with it and when i saw him again he said it was fucked so I said ok i'll have it back and how much do you want for work done on it and he said just give us a fiver. He then turned up with just the sd card from the phone in an envelope and I went into a rage and said give me the fucking phone back dickhead, I'm actually worried that you still have it! I gave him such a bollocking for his conduct and mentioned that there might be cookies linked to my bank account on this CPU etc.. that he posted in an envelope and scurried off when I opened the door. He had taken the sim card out which had all my contacts saved on it but it is cancelled so I'm hoping he can't do any damage with it.

I saw him earlier and thought lets try and rise above this and was civil to him and he stormed past me like a late 40's adolescent. This is why apart from my immediate family I much prefer the company of my dog to most humans. I'll probably end up screwing his tires one night when I'm drunk because I'm still paranoid he might be the cunt who made the malicious complaints that put us under the section 47 for 18 months that nearly killed me whilst other events were nearly killing me.

we have a 3ft fence between our neighbours and us. we want to put in a 6ft but theyre not keen

are there any obnoxious behaviours I can develop to make them keen? who wants to have to make small talk everytime youre in your garden?!

a.... 3-foot fence?

buy a bunch of new pets that are easily able to scale the fence and run into their yard

not my neighbors, but I went to a house party on the Fourth of July in a tucked away lakeside community. I knew the friend's neighbors would be trouble when parking my car. there was a custom, illegally made No Parking sign in front of legitimate, community approved parking spaces because parking there would block the lakeside view, and the sign said "We paid for a LAKE view, not a CAR view". I deliberately parked in front of the sign as it was the only space left and my alternative was parking in the next legal spot two blocks away which..nope.

so keep in mind this is July 4th and it's not even particularly late, and our friends are setting off some mild fireworks, and once again, passive aggressive neighbor who is sitting outside with her husband walks by and mentions "shame you all have to do fireworks, my husband doesn't like it", and walks away before anybody can reply, then asshole husband starts screaming "knock it off" even though it's literally a holiday where fireworks go off and there's no reason for them to be sitting outside otherwise, because it's dark and mosquito-y.

we stopped because we were tired of their shit (I honestly don't care for fireworks anyway so I didn't care).

Starting to wonder if it’s the neighbors that are the problem in this thread

I, on the other hand, haven't met or talked to a neighbor in years, and haven't had issues, so I think you are correct.

I mean I did have some that did nothing but smoke weed and stink up the stairwell but i was more aggrieved they didn't share with me

we need to clarify that housemates are neighbors (or not)

on the Sunday before the last one my Co2 alarm started doing a treble bleep in a 60 second cycle because the battery was dying. I chucked it out the front door for until i could be arsed getting out the lump hammer to kill it. Because it is a sealed pvc unit with no on/off switch, it seems you do have to smash the bleeping thing to shut it down. The noise of it was still travelling through the walls from outside and you'd almost be tempted to think it was still inside the house. I thought fuck this cursed thing. So that gave me the idea to chuck it into some briars behind this chump's house at the edge of the estate.

I've quarrelled with the chump numerous times and he's an absolute knave who has a snarling joyless pit-bull terrier and he has this habit of trying to blame other people's dogs as the guilty party that "started it" when his poorly socialised teeth on legs ugly bastard tries to bite them. Anyway I pass his house every morning on the way to the "mountains" (just a hill really but the locals call it the mountains!) and twelve nights later Co2 alarm is still going blip blip blip every 60 secs! Even with a dying battery, the recent deluge followed by frost - it is still going strong. I feel a bit guilty that some of his neighbours will have been suffering this every night as well, but war is hell. It's amazing how far the bleeping sound carries as well, you can hear it from almost quarter of mile away on the mountains. In the early morning it blends in neatly with the dawn chorus but it must seem loud at night when your house is only 20 yards from it.

One of my lasting regrets is that I didn't sneak a dying yet persistent smoke alarm into a very hidden place in the home of someone I despise.

Please know that you are living my dream.

under some floorboards would be best!

ironically, i smashed up a similarly bleeping selfcontained snoke alarm in our place in 2004

Ha I've been on the other side of that when my dickhead neighbour chucked his smoke alarm into a skip and the rain triggered it and my wife was trying to sleep. He wasn't in so I chucked everything out of the skip until I found the alarm and stomped the shit out of it until it stopped going off. The great thing about that was I left all the shit all over his front yard and they came and collected the skip the next day and left a load of crap including doors and other bulky shit all over the pavement and he had to dispose of that himself. Fuck that cunt anyway

This prick told us to stop complaining about noise because he's 60 and we should respect our elders. I don't think that applies to people in their 40s but I just need an excuse to punch that cunt in the face

He's a leather worker and does it in his house right next to ours and doesn't give a fuck what time it is or that he's next door to a dying woman

Now I don't have to be nice because fuck it who gives a fuck my wife is dead I don't have to try not to get kicked out by the landlord

we have a bro infestation in our building now

I probably shouldn't post on ilx when I'm drunk, he says after mostly posting on ilx when he's drunk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdZRN1bs200&feature=youtu.be

15 days later and it is still beeping!

essential 5 second youtube vid of beeping Co2 alarm

Reminds me a the 2000s prank gadget the Annoy-a-Tron, versions of which seem to still be available on etsy. They are probably easier to hide than a full-fledged CO2 alarm, but excellent work calzino for your inventiveness in this situation.

https://www.etsy.com/search?q=annoy%20a%20tron

from the youtube demos I've seen of them I don't think they'd survive the days of torrential rainfall the seemingly indestructible built-by-SkyNet Co2 alarm has!

I can't even remember if Co2 alarms are supposed to have an IP rating in UK safety regs, but this one would get a high number for sure.

last year for the 4th of July, my good friend P@m warned me about her neighbors. So I go to park, and where she lives there's nothing but street parking really, but there's like one space left when I get there. all of a sudden, I'm parking and I see this obnoxious sign on a stick next to a LEGAL parking space that says NO PARKING - I PAID FOR A LAKESIDE VIEW, NOT A CARSIDE VIEW.

nonetheless, I ignored it and left my car there.

was it a true lake or an orlando puddle lake?

oh compleeeetely the latter

we have glorified retention ponds

lol i moved from volcanic new zealand to orlando and was dismayed by the lake designation standards

One of my ILX neighbors keeps telling the same story.

not my neighbors, but I went to a house party on the Fourth of July in a tucked away lakeside community. I knew the friend's neighbors would be trouble when parking my car. there was a custom, illegally made No Parking sign in front of legitimate, community approved parking spaces because parking there would block the lakeside view, and the sign said "We paid for a LAKE view, not a CAR view". I deliberately parked in front of the sign as it was the only space left and my alternative was parking in the next legal spot two blocks away which..nope.

so keep in mind this is July 4th and it's not even particularly late, and our friends are setting off some mild fireworks, and once again, passive aggressive neighbor who is sitting outside with her husband walks by and mentions "shame you all have to do fireworks, my husband doesn't like it", and walks away before anybody can reply, then asshole husband starts screaming "knock it off" even though it's literally a holiday where fireworks go off and there's no reason for them to be sitting outside otherwise, because it's dark and mosquito-y.

we stopped because we were tired of their shit (I honestly don't care for fireworks anyway so I didn't care).

― ill fuckin put a paste on those (Neanderthal), Saturday, February 8, 2020 9:11 AM

the weirdest fucking thing about that is even that post wasn't from when it happened, but many months after, and I have no recollection of writing it.

jesus even used the same fuckin' wording!!!

the other fucked thing is there have been quite a few times where I've randomly written something on FB and then gone on Memories and see I wrote the same thing like 8 years ago on the same date

I've done it once or twice myself.

oh dear lads