Neighbour Tales!

Let me preface this by saying that I am probably the strangest of all my neighbours and they probably tell tales of me, just I am going to tell you of them! I grow a lot of veg along my windowsils inside my flat and I harden seedlings off on my steps. I use my car as a shed. I play trombone and other instruments loudly (and badly). I constantly keep things in my entrance way to my flat and you have to dance your way in.   But I have some really pretty funny neighbours as well.  It’s fun to watch anyways!  

1.) The guy who washes his three cars. Endlessly.  I don't think I have ever not seen him washing his cars.  If its raining, he's in the garage, with the bonnet up, scrubbing away at the engine....with a toothbrush!! I have seen him drive away, run an errand, and come back 10 minutes later and he'll have to rewash the car that he's spent all day looking after.  His pride and joy is his Audi and another is a Vauxhall Astra and the other is a Ford Ka...  

2.) The guy who is never not outside smoking.  He's out there when I wake up in the morning. He's there when I get home. He's there if you wake up at 3 am or 4 am or 2:11 am or 5:45 am to pee.  He's there when I'm making dinner.  He's there when I get home from band practice at 10 pm. He's there, always smoking.

3.) The early 20 something’s where 8 of them live in a 2 bedroom flat.  Amusing.  There’s always at least 2 of them sitting outside in a car, for hours on end.    I’m sure they’re having a lovely, private conversation- you would want somewhere private if you lived with that many people!  

4.)  The guy who lives downstairs keeps his blinds drawn all the time. But, if you dare pet his kitty who likes to sit outside on the steps, he’ll come out  and threaten to kill you.   I have seen this a few times.  He never leaves (he is always home- he often collects my parcels that get dropped off.  He’s nice enough to me. But I don’t dare pet his kitty), except between the hours of 6pm-10 pm.  And if he's cooking, the smoke alarm is usually going off and he ignores it and keeps cooking.   And he keeps his motorbike inside his flat.

Tell me your funny neighbour stories!      
 

Awww - I don't really have any, unless you want stories about Andee!    (I could tell you her Philly cheesesteak - there's a pigeon in the pickles!! story - but I think you've already heard it.)

There's a young couple next door that just bought the house last spring & I hardly ever see them!

A bedridden old woman lives next door to them.

Then another young couple who are due to move out soon.

Then another old woman, followed by her adult son (next door to her) who has some type of disability.

But no good stories! 

"There's a pigeon in the pickles!!!" 

I don't know if I have any good neighbour stories either.  There's the new early-20-something couple who moved in next door who only have loud parties once in a while.  they seem nice enough.  They have a cat that is an indoor cat.

On the other side is a nice woman who we always chat with when we see her.  40s, Irish, loves to hear us play our music, school teacher.

Next to her is Dylan's mum to whom one of these days I really should officially introduce myself to.  She seems really nice, has teenagers. a couple other cats which are indoor cats.

None particularly unusual....

None particularly unusual....

You used to have the one who would shout & swear outside the window when you played your harp or violin!  

Next to her is Dylan's mum to whom one of these days I really should officially introduce myself to.  She seems really nice, has teenagers. a couple other cats which are indoor cats.

The mother of Rent-A-Cat!! 

You used to have the one who would shout & swear outside the window when you played your harp or violin!  

Yeah, she was pretty nuts.  She calmed down a bit when she got a boyfriend and he moved, then less than a year later they moved out.

You used to have the one who would shout & swear outside the window when you played your harp or violin!  

Booooo!

The mother of Rent-A-Cat!! 

Haha Rent-A-Cat!

Took me a year and a half to realise a coworker lives 4 doors down....  I am ashamed...

I've only just moved, and all of my neighbors seem like pretty standard 20-somethings.

However, if I may, I'd like to share about my nextdoor neighbor when I was living in Bothwell. It was a 30s Eastern European couple, not sure from where, with a small baby. Whenever they'd hang their washing out, we'd see the man's leopard/zebra/tiger print pants hanging out there which I'd always giggle about. The man smoked a lot, but with the baby he was often outside doing it.

One night at about 2 am, we hear another couple a few doors down having some drunken argument. My ex and I were watching from the window cause we're nosy! Next thing we know, our neighbor comes out in his zebra pants and starts smoking a cigarette and watching the argument. The drunk man turns and says 'What are you looking at?!' or something like that. My neighbor just stands there, in his pants, smoking the cigarette and says nothing. The couple stares back. They all just stare at each other for a good 3 or 4 minutes and the couple shuts up and goes inside!

Another night, a group of about 30 neds were having some massive fight out in the car park. Girls shrieking, boys clobbering each other, I think a couple were even wielding bike chains. The neighbor comes out, dressed this time, and lights a cigarette. He stands there for a few minutes, then slowly walks to his car as if nothing his happening while teenagers are throwing punches at each other. Somehow, they all just part like Moses parting the Red Sea while he gets into his car. They all just stop and look at him, amazed that anyone would just walk into this mess. He back his car out, flicks his cigarette out the window and drives away, and all the neds left after that.

I don't know who that man was, but I swear he was magical...and brave! 

Knock on wood, my neighbors seem okay.  I wasn't too sure about my next-door neighbor at first though.  She's a single mom, probably in her late forties, with a couple of teenagers in the house.  We moved into this house on a Friday.  That Sunday morning, she knocked at my door to introduce herself, which I thought was nice, and I stupidly invited her in for a cuppa.  Then she took off her coat, and I realized she was still in her jammies.  She had a bottle of cider in her handbag, and was already drunk    Once I made it clear that that's not really my thing (being totally pissed at 10 am) she's not been back drunk ever since lol. 

NOT - your zebra pants neighbour sounds AMAZING!!

I seem to be cursed with neighbours, particularly if they are single middle-aged men!

My first flat was below an Italian 50-something man who enjoyed drinking, smoking and listening to techno music from 2am to 5am. In the off-chance he had a girlfriend (and she would of course be Italian as well), we would be awoken in the middle of the night to them having a very "passionate" argument. But whenever we complained to him, he would apologise profusely and the following day stop by our front door with a discount cake from Tesco.

Then there's my current neighbour, somewhere in his 40s. A heavy drinker, smoker and cocaine user who wakes us up EVERY night with his coughing and EVERY morning at 5 am we hear him purging seemingly all of his internal organs. There was a recent night he actually managed to bring a woman home, resulting in X-rated noise from midnight to 6am. I'm guessing that was an expensive night for him...

But the best "neighbour" I ever had was when I was living next to a fire department. The constant sirens could get to you at times, but they were a blessing for me the day the smoke detector in my flat ran out of batteries. The ceiling was absurdly high and I was on my own - at only 4'11" I didn't have much of a chance, even when I climbed on the back of the sofa...
So over I went to the fire department to see if someone could help me replace the battery in my smoke detector. They were a bit hesitant at first, telling me they didn't have a stepladder, but then one of the men suggested they could send over a "kit". They then asked me to wait outside my front door so I could let them in. I stood there, keys ready, assuming the "kit" was some sort of tool that would allow them to get the smoke detector off my ceiling. Instead I watched the garage doors go up, the sirens turn on and a whole bloody fire truck drive a few metres and stop outside my front door with lights flashing! Three fully-equipped firemen proceeded into my flat to remove the malfunctioning device, using a three-tiered ladder. I can only hope there wasn't an actual fire somewhere else in Southwark that night!

But the best "neighbour" I ever had was when I was living next to a fire department.

I have a fire station neighbour story too! See, DH always carries the keys, so on New Year's Day he and I were dying for some chocolate, and we popped across the road to the Sainsbury's which was gloriously open. When we got back, we had plenty of chocolate, but no keys to get inside!

We popped to the very, very quiet fire station and the guy there happily came over and jimmied our door open without harming a hair on its head. He also happily received a Twix for his troubles.

I generally don't tend to know my neighbours. If I do know them, it's likely because they've annoyed me in some way, like people who own subwoofers in apartment buildings.

Though actually, we lived in a beautiful 1930s block in Richmond, London and our neighbour was this lovely older lady, probably in her 80s. She'd always say hello when we passed in the walkways or in the elevator. On the day we moved out she came over to say goodbye and gave us hugs.

This happened less than a month ago.

My neighbour Ernie was a nice guy-he always said hello when he parked up, occasionally had a chat and once gave my son a football when he saw that we were using a very old beach-like ball as a substitute.

The night before it all went down, I honest-to-God said to my husband (we've had a bit of police activity recently, an armed unit came through our house to get access to our alley after reports of a shooting-and we live in a 'decent' part of Liverpool!) 'You know, Ernie seems like the one neighbour that would come out and help us if something bad went down.'

Next morning my daughter was up super early and I opened up the curtains in our front room, only to notice about a half dozen cop cars and about a dozen cops standing about in the road.  Throughout the day the cops left and we were left with a large cop van and people going in and out of Ernie's house all day.  We were coming/going and never managed to have a word with them.

Around 5pm, playing football outside with my son, a cop walked over and asked if we had noticed anything suspicious about Ernie.  Ends up he had a huge marijuana factory in his home.  He'd re-routed the electricity, put a hole in the ceiling, super hot, the works.

About two weeks ago, we saw Ernie-he came over and apologised and gave us a story about him getting caught up with the 'wrong people' and the pot only being for him.  He'd heard a knock on his door at 5am and it was three masked men who attacked him and slashed his tyres! We later found out from his immediate neighbour (we were two doors down) that he had a HUGE operation going on.

I'm a stay-at-home mom who works evenings so I see a lot and never had a clue.  My Scouse colleagues were impressed that I called the cops 'bizzies'!

My next door neighbour has a 6 week old baby. He looks exhausted*.

*The neighour not the baby

I love my neighbors. The ones immediately next to us are a family of five. The husband is a constable and I’m not sure what his wife does. He’s really helpful and he’s always doing stuff to make the neighborhood nice. They have 3 daughters who are adorable and really pleasant. Then on the other side is a couple in their 30s. I think the husband might be in his 40s, but they’re nice and pretty quiet. Our cat hates their cat though. Further down there is a retired couple who are always away in their caravan. When they’re home, the husband is always washing his car or cutting the grass.

The only real complaint we have is that we live at the end of a private road. Our property extends from the house, across the road, to the hedge and people are always parking there. It’s a problem because they stink at parking and we almost hit them when we try to get out of the driveway. If they would just park closer to the barrier, it wouldn’t be an issue. People also seem to think it’s ok to park literally at the end of our driveway (blocking us in) and then just leaving and not letting us know where we can find them. We once had to knock on a ton of doors to find the culprit. When we found out who it was, it took them 20 minutes to move their car and they acted as though we inconvenienced them. Um, no.

We have boring neighbours here.

Years ago my friends and I lived next door to the landlady, who had a million cats and piles of old newspapers in her front hall.  Our toilet had a wonky seat so it clunked whenever someone sat on it and every time she would phone up and say "Please girls, stop throwing shoes against the wall"    We always referred to her as BatLady.  But that was all pretty normal stuff in Cambridge, Mass.