What Cheeses Me Off - 8

 Am I getting too crabby in my old age?

Living in suburbia seems to be a matter of give and take - but it always seems to be them giving it and us having to put up with it!

The lady up the street is always yelling. It doesn't matter if she is in the house or getting in the car. She just yells at her family members. She yells during the day and she yells late at night. She yells when she's angry and she yells when she's not. Her visitors honk their horns two or three times every day, often waking us up.

The guy living opposite us chopped a tree down and reduced it to a big mulch pile on the council strip outside his property. That was early March. It's still an eyesore four months later!

We have very good reason to suspect the neighbour over the back poisoned our silky oak tree a few years back, costing us over a thousand dollars to have it initially treated and later removed.

Over the years the same neighbours have frequently played loud radio as they worked in the garden. When I once politely asked if they might turn the volume down, I was told it was their right to play loud radio in their garden. How do you reason with people like that?

The folks one up from them installed a swimming pool, which twice was emptied by thoughtlessly allowing the (presumably chlorinated) water to drain away down the slope, straight into our garden and causing flooding. 

Two neighbours have recently acquired dogs which don't seem to stop barking while the owners are away. Several neighbourhood cats come into our garden. They try to kill the bird life and have so far destroyed two expensive birdbaths. One knocked a plank off my side gate because it was always jumping off it.

Of course, it's not only destruction that cats leave behind.

I shouldn't get annoyed by my neighbour's backyard light but I'm an astronomer and I do like a bit of darkness sometimes. Their floodlight is blinding industrial strength - but what really cheeses me off is their wood fire. More specifically, the chimney and what comes out of it. I groaned when I saw it being installed after they moved in, because the smell of other wood fires in the area was already bad enough. More smoke is bad news for asthmatics like me. I thought internal wood fires were banned a few years ago but people still install them, so obviously they must be legal, but I cannot think why!

So the neighbours are saving on energy costs while we're dying of lung disease! Their chimney is about level with our doors and windows, so when the breeze is in our direction we get it full on. When there is very little breeze - as is often the case - the smoke just hangs around, errrmmm... like a bad smell. Walk outside and the smell is there all through winter. Open the front door to greet a visitor and their first comment is to ask about the smoke! 

Welcome to suburbia, where there is always someone with anti-social tendencies. Can't open the windows in summer because of one neighbour's radio. Can't open the doors in winter because of another neighbour's putrid smoke exhaust. It cheeses me off - but we've never complained and I wouldn't live anywhere else!