Over the years we’ve lived in some places where we’ve had interesting neighbours, and I suppose we’ve been interesting to live next door to as well, always having musicians coming and going and loud music pumping from the house.
I remember when I lived on my own in Lavington,(BTK before the king) I was surrounded by people, let’s just say of lower socio-economic circumstances. These particular people would let their 18mth old twins out their door to play at 6am every day. Their door just happened to be right next to my bedroom window. They’d yell and scream, fight and cry, then the father would yell. Not very conducive to getting sleep after arriving home drunk at 3am, that’s for sure. I was a little intimidated by him and so I complained to my management company rather than confront him … A few weeks later they were gone 🙂 Yeah I get stuff done.
Later on I lived in another part of town, next to a very elderly lady, who’s elderly son was a bit weird, he moved in after she died and was downright pervy…His mother used to feed my german shepherd over the fence, which I had to stop. He used to watch me from his back yard but I ignored him and he got the message after I extended the fence height.(to keep the dog in of course) Not sure what his motive was there but I think it could have been sinister.
Once we moved to Queensland, we lived in a few places before finally purchasing our home in Kingsway Dve. Now that street was an acreage street and although not rural, certainly not suburbia and many people didn’t have fences although they had dogs. We luckily did have fences and were able to keep our 2 german shepherds safely behind them. However the dogs across the street used to come over very early, before anyone was up and harass our dogs through the fence. I’d have to get up and chase them home and it went on every morning for quite some time. Finally one morning, unbeknownst to us, one of our dogs escaped through the gate and attacked the little jack russell terrier that had taunted her for months. Good on her, I say…. Well a couple of days later the doorbell rings and it’s the neighbour from across the road, saying our dog got out and attacked their dog and the vet bill was 200 bucks and they wanted us to pay. I argued that their dogs had been taunting ours for months, since we moved in and we were always chasing them away early in the morning. She wasn’t having that and I said sorry but I’ll have to speak to my husband. Now the King was mightily pissed about it as we had put up with their dogs for a long time. He marched himself over in all his largeness and had a conversation with Mr. Neighbour, pointing out some home truths and that they should just pay for their own dog and we’ll make sure ours don’t get out again.The King came home and not another word was said about it 🙂 Guess he was pretty persuasive.
Later on we moved to Harlem and had made friends with our neighbours across the hall, it’s always good to be friendly to the people who live close enough to damage you 🙂 or hear intimate details of your life.We had children the same age and the top floor became one big open play area for said children every day. We had keys to each others apartments so if needed, we could do things for each other.
One evening there was a party in an apartment below, to which we were invited and enjoyed their margaritas immensely. Upon leaving, many, many margaritas later, to commute back upstairs we absconded with their 6′ lifelike cardboard cut out Elvis with motion sensor, who said ‘ Thank you very much’ and ‘uhuh uhhuh’ when it detected movement…… Well we had it in our front room for a day or two then as our across the hall neighbours were away for the weekend we planted him in the back of their en suite and ‘lay in wait’ for their return. Of course the commotion of coming home from a trip with little people is all consuming but we knew eventually they’d need a bathroom break and we were anticipating the surprise. The surprise for them came at some ungodly hour after midnight and we all laughed at the recounting of their reaction over coffee the next day! Who even does that to people? ………………….Clearly we do. Be warned. 🙂
Some months later on, I had just painted our hallway a dark grey and as it turns out they had painted their bedroom grey too, although their grey wasn’t what they’d hoped for and there was some grey painted wall envy going on..Mr Neighbour and I had a lengthy conversation one afternoon playtime about how he loved our colour and how disappointed he was about how their project turned out. He showed me what he really wanted and innocently went on his way, little did he know.
That weekend, they went out of town….. yeah they do that a bit. I had some leftover paint and I snuck over there and spent 3 hours on a Saturday painting their bedroom the desired grey.
Sunday evening around 5 we heard them bustle out of the elevator in the usual fashion, tired and travel weary. We must have looked pretty stupid sitting in our apartment grinning like children waiting for the inevitable knock. 1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours tick by ….. and we’ve lost our grins and wondered to each other, how could they have missed it? Finally at 10pm we hear their door open and they yelled ‘You’re crazy!’ we opened our door and all 4 of us had the best laugh and enjoyed the moment. We do stuff like that. It breaks the monotony and it’s funny. To this day, their bedroom walls are grey and I’m sure they’re waiting for the next trick….. Clearly they’re not too worried though because they didn’t confiscate our keys.
We may be bad neighbours but we sure are fun.