The trouble with neighbours

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