Neighbours from Hell

This used to be such a quiet neighbourhood. Most of my neighbours are either elderly or couples with young children. We have the strange family around the corner who are good for some gossip (especially since the woman is my best friend's husband's ex-wife), but they mostly keep to themselves and don't bother anyone else.

But now we have new neighbours across the street. The rumour is that they used to live at the other end of the estate but were kicked out of their council house because there had been so many complaints against them. Now they're in a rented privately-owned house, and they're still not the greatest neighbours!

Within a week of moving in, the woman who lives there was taken away in a police car. I was sitting on my couch watching an F1 race, and I noticed police cars in front of their house. A couple and a teenage girl got out of their car, the girl holding her face and crying, as if she'd been hit, and she was pointing at the woman. The police went into the house for a while, then they came out with the woman, put her in the back of their car, and left.

They are always sitting in the front of the house on the doorstep, where their front garden looks like a miniature Disney World with bouncy castles and paddling pools. It's like watching the queen presiding over the neighbourhood.

But that's not the worst of it. They've installed a spot light with a motion sensor that switches it on every time a car drives past. And the spot light is so bright, it lights up my living room, shining directly towards my couch. My couch has been there for three years, and now if I want to sit on it to watch telly, I have to either suffer a blinding light every two minutes or shut my curtains. I shouldn't have to shut my curtains to enjoy my living room!

Still, this woman doesn't seem to be the kind of person you can just walk up to and say "Excuse me, can you do something about that light?" I'm not going to kiss her ass either. I'm sure I'll think of something.

Those aren't the worst neighbours we have either. Several years ago when we lived in Texas, my ex-husband got a phone call from his parents informing him that his cousin had been seriously injured in a car accident where the driver had run off leaving his friends for dead. Fortunately his cousin survived, and the idiot had his license taken away.

Only temporarily though. Last year he moved onto our estate, and they gave him his license back. I didn't let my younger two kids outside unless it was on the back garden because he drove up and down our road so fast I was scared he would lose control of his car. That's exactly what happened, but luckily he did it somewhere else because we saw his car come back on the back of a lorry in pieces. Either he toned it down a bit, or he lost his license again.

Yesterday, the police came for him again. This time it was a drugs bust, and he's been taken away. It even made the regional news. He'd been dealing to kids as well, so I hope they keep him locked up for a long time. I'm sure we'll know what happens to him because Simon's cousin lives with a man whose wife left him for the drug-dealing idiot, and they live down the road from us, not far from said drug-dealing idiot!

I have got to win the lottery. Then I can buy a house, or have one built, somewhere where I have no close neighbours! I'm a people person. I love having people come see me, like my friends who live around the corner, but the idea of solitude away from neighbours from hell suddenly seems irresistible! No wonder I've started spending so much time in wide open spaces where you come across few people, like on the moors or out of the way public footpaths!