Good neighbours? bad Neighbours? Tell your neighbours stories

[hollydolly]

It's well documented here that I have great neighbours.. One side brings me food all the time.. a young couple with children.. the other side are fairly quiet but pleasant,...I moved here when they were both at school and I've known them for the whole 46 years since I moved here. They grew up, the parents died, they stayed at their family home, they had children, their children have had children and moved away.. but these 2 siblings have stayed.. and they will take in parcels for me.. as will the other side...or tell me about any events in the neighbourhood...

I also know the wider range of neighbours in the road as well by name , and have been in their homes as they have mine when our kids were young.. 3 sets of neighbours are now well in their 8's..close to 90.. so they won't be here for much longer..

One large house is now up for sale, people in their 80's... another has just sold to 2 women who moved in and seem not to want to be friendly with all of us here.. which we're not used to.. they scowl if we glance at them.. ..and I suspect before long we''ll have many more newbies afer all these years...as the folks who've lived here even longer than me pass away


What's your neighbour story...good , bad , indifferent... ?

 

[GoodEnuff]

I have lived in this house for almost three years. One neighbor is a sibling who is mean, manipulating, inconsiderate. I have cut contact with him.

The other neighbor is a large family. They are the nicest, hardest working people I have ever known. A few of the eldest boys, now in their 20's, have moved away for work but still come home for visits. The eldest is the young man who has done sooo much work on this house. The eldest girl house/dog sat for me when I took a trip to visit daughter in another state. Every one of them works at something and they all contribute to the family. They also play together, with a good work/life balance. Always smiling, always friendly. Some think they are Amish. They are not.

I have never met people this nice. Best neighbors one can hope for. If more people were like them, the world would be a much better place. I think of that line from the movie "As Good As It Gets": you make me want to be a better person. That is how they make me feel.

 

[hollydolly]

I have lived in this house for almost three years. One neighbor is a sibling who is mean, manipulating, inconsiderate. I have cut contact with him.

The other neighbor is a large family. They are the nicest, hardest working people I have ever known. A few of the eldest boys, now in their 20's, have moved away for work but still come home for visits. The eldest is the young man who has done sooo much work on this house. The eldest girl house/dog sat for me when I took a trip to visit daughter in another state. Every one of them works at something and they all contribute to the family. They also play together, with a good work/life balance. Always smiling, always friendly. Some think they are Amish. They are not.

I have never met people this nice. Best neighbors one can hope for. If more people were like them, the world would be a much better place. I think of that line from the movie "As Good As It Gets": you make me want to be a better person. That is how they make me feel.

How awkward to have a toxic sibling as a neighbour...I would hate that..... thank goodness that's offset by your lovely other neighbours

 

[KSav]

Back when the kids and I lived at the old apartment, we had some horrid upstairs neighbors. They were loud and disruptive, and at one point they were letting their large dog relieve itself on their balcony, so of course our patio, directly underneath, ended up littered with p-ss. They would also shovel the dog crap over the side.

One day, I came home from the store, planning to bring groceries in through the patio. I couldn't because there was a heavy ring of dog sh-t all around the perimeter. I finally lost it, pulled out my phone, and called the office right then and there.

They ended up getting evicted a few months later.

I don't think we ever had a bad neighbor when we lived in any of our houses. Apartments are a whole other story!

I don't know any of my neighbors now. I'm in a different apartment, but people in this state aren't exactly social. People don't even say hello. It's vastly different from other states I've lived in.

 

[Pepper]

NYC neighbors are used to apartment living. I have lived almost exclusively in apartments all my life. Urban living is what I’m used to.

Most NYers I find to be friendly and helpful but also know the value of minding one’s own business when required.

I lived quite a few months on a farm in rural Wisconsin. I could have lived that life too. Ive found most people anywhere i have lived to be decent.

Some dramatic moments with neighbors. My younger rambunctious days when we were all rambunctious and dramatic.

With breaks in between I have lived in this apartment almost 73 years. I know some neighbors since young childhood.

 

[Rae]

We have nice quiet neighbors and I am happy about them. Some wave or say hello when out walking. We have had bad neighbors here but now they have moved on. They were young and mostly noisy and some on drugs.

Now, some youngsters ride around on those electric scooters and they are reckless so have to watch for them when driving.

All in all, it is a nice place to live.

 

[CallMeKate]

Bad neighbor: Many years ago, there was the definition of a busybody next door. She always came out when I was hanging laundry and thought it was a good idea to comment on the things I was hanging out to dry. I was still young enough that it was embarrassing.

Good neighbor: Navy veteran across the street when I moved here 20 years ago... and he's still there. One of the first things he did was offer the use of his truck any time it was needed... total stranger!

 

[Jeni]

My current neighbor seemed nice at first but now we avoid them.
It sucks I stay out of their line of sight. whenever I have a lawnmower going, leaf blower once even with a electric saw ..... they have literally come up behind me to tap my shoulder.

I wear headphones to clue most in I am not in mood to chat etc. Never stops them from interrupting to chat about NOTHING .......stuff we have talked about 3 times before.... So, I see when they leave house ..... I get out and mow as fast as possible seriously. ever see someone run while mowing.

Last year they dug up a spot in my yard leveled and reseeded .... did not say a word to me but later claimed there was a divot that he worried his wife would trip on while walking in my yard? ... WHY? Zero reason for people to be doing things in my yard close to my house. not even close to property line this seems like trespassing.

Found out NO one in neighborhood can stand them and avoid if possible.

 

[hollydolly]

My current neighbor seemed nice at first but now we avoid them.
It sucks I stay out of their line of sight. whenever I have a lawnmower going, leaf blower once even with a electric saw ..... they have literally come up behind me to tap my shoulder.

I wear headphones to clue most in I am not in mood to chat etc. Never stops them from interrupting to chat about NOTHING .......stuff we have talked about 3 times before.... So, I see when they leave house ..... I get out and mow as fast as possible seriously. ever see someone run while mowing.

Last year they dug up a spot in my yard leveled and reseeded .... did not say a word to me but later claimed there was a divot that he worried his wife would trip on while walking in my yard? ... WHY? Zero reason for people to be doing things in my yard close to my house. not even close to property line this seems like trespassing.

Found out NO one in neighborhood can stand them and avoid if possible.

what? they dug up your lawn and replaced a piece because THEY might trip over it ?... OMG !

 

[Capt Lightning]

It took me a while to get used to my neighbours. For a start, this is a small village where most people had been here for years and knew one another. Now after 20 years, they still assume that I know everyone and their family trees, while in fact, I've got no idea who they are talking about. There was also the general assumption that you could do whatever you liked as long as you weren't harming one. This really annoyed me at times - things like letting the kids ride small motorbikes up and down the ride or on to the road.

My daughter summed it up nicely - in return for a bit of nuisance, you know that if you were in trouble, they would be the first people to help.
It's still the same, although the kids have grown, and I still don't know the names of most people, we are there for each other. When our son died unexpectedly last year, word spread and people whom I barely knew would stop to speak and offer their help and condolences.

I'm happy to live here, even if I have to chase chickens out of my garden.

 

[jujube]

I had the best neighbors in the world at the last house I owned. After my husband died, they were always there for me, always ready to help if I needed it.

I had a dead tree in the backyard that needed to be taken down. I got estimates between $1000 and $3000 to get it taken down professionally. One day, I came home from one of my granddaughter's early-morning races; I had a bad headache, so I took some strong medication and went to bed.

When I woke up a couple of hours later, I heard a noise in the back yard, looked out and found that my neighbor and his teen-age son had taken the tree down and were hauling the remains out to the street.

That was just one of the many things they did for me, mostly on a regular basis. I really appreciated them.

Bad neighbors? I had a few that were "annoying" but only one that was truly a BAD neighbor. That was up in Michigan and I can only say that the man lived to be unpleasant, not only to us but to the entire neighborhood. One time while we were on vacation, someone spraypainted naughty words on the side of his house....the side facing our house....and he told the police we had done it.

The officer came to see us and told us that they knew we were gone on vacation (which they knew because the police asked people to register with them when they would be gone for a while so they could look out for anything), but he told them that we had obviously hired someone to do it while we were gone. The officer said he knew we didn't have anything to do with it but just that he had to talk to us about it for the record. I asked him if they had any suspects and he said, "Well, that would narrow it down to anyone within a 3-block radius...."

I could keep on about what he did to us and other neighbors, but you get the gist.

 

[hollydolly]

In one of the Married quarters where I lived.. all the husbands were at sea for several months at a time.. so all of the women in every house knew each other and most of us socialised together as well

However 2 doors down from me was a woman who had umpteen kids.. she was double our age ( we were all early 20's)... and her husband was shore based so he came home ever night..

She was a horrible scrounger... and every night she would send one or more of her kids.. to all the neighbours asking for items to cook for her husbands dinner.. and also for cigarettes..

So, a kid would come to my house late afternoon and ask me if mum could ''borrow a couple of eggs or a couple of sausages''... then go to the next asking for potatoes, then the next for cigarettes... of course none of us got anything returned, and all of us newly married with babies were broke, and could ill afford to lend anything out...


We soon put a stop to it....

This was the only house we lived in.. and we lived in a lot..... where my washing was stolen off the line, and I think her kids did it...

 

[ossian]

We moved to this house last summer. It is a lovely old bungalow in a very, very quiet village. Just what we wanted to get away from neighbours who moved into our old street which was also very quiet........ until they arrived! He was a builder and immediately set upon converting the house in a way that affected our privacy significantly. But it did not stop at this, the garden became a site and was constantly in a state of development. Decking, outbuildings, etc, etc.

However, we lived at the top of a hill and therefore the land lay on a substantial slope, so all of this stuff had to be build on raised platforms meaning that whatever they did looked directly into our house. They had 6 older kids and as many cars or vans. Generally they were not too noisy, except when the work started.

So when we moved to our new house we were excited at getting away from that and the growing boy who lived a couple of doors along from us who had full size soccer goals and wooden target players in his very small back garden. As he got older, the noise got louder.

However, behind our new home, cornering onto our rear garden we inherited another builder. This one was worse as he was extending his property and worked day and night from when we moved in until....... Well, he has not finished!

He has two small kids and a very small garden and they are extremely noisy as small kids tend to be. The rear of his house has been developed beyond what was approved in planning and he has extended beyond his boundary, built up from a burn (stream) that separates us potentially causing a flood risk to those upstream and has filled his hard landscaped back garden with lights that would exceed those in the public street.

Is he concerned that you can hear him or his kids throughout the village? It would appear not.

We were aware that the work was being done before we bought the house but I miscalculated the distance from our home. I thought he was further away from our house.