Bad Neighbour Stories
Bad neighbours can make life hell, especially if you just want to be left alone and mind your own business. Some people seem incapable of not bothering their neighbours though and I’ve had quite a few over of this sort over the years, perhaps in part because I used to live in the crappy parts of suburbs because the rent would be cheaper.
So here are Big Angry Trev’s Top 10 Encounters with Bad Neighbours:
*Bad Neighbour #1: Parking-Spot Parionia Karen
Reservoir Victoria, Australia, 1996.
Was living in a block of 5 units in Reservoir. We were probably the bad neighbours to most other residents because it was during my Uni days and used to throw lots of parties. The cops would usually show up and ask us to keep the noise down. We would apologise and immediately do so, but it must have irked the neighbours that this would happen about 8 times a year.
One morning I’m in the shower. My girlfriend who had stayed the night came in to tell me the lady in Unit 5 (we were in 3) had just come to the door and told me to stop the harassment or she would call the police. I had never even said hello to this woman so had no idea what she was on about.
Went and knocked on the ladies door to find out what it was all about. She accused me of parking my car out the front of her place and revving the engine a lot (never happened) to harass her. She then went on about how I shouldn’t judge her just because she’s a single mother (I would have been 19, she looked early 20’s), making it sound like I had already decided she must be a slut or something.
I informed her that I had never revved my car in front of her unit, the most I had ever done was pull up in front so I then reverse in to my allotted spot. Told her that I had never judged her because I knew absolutely nothing about her and that for all I knew she lived with four big guys that would beat me up for even looking at her sideways.
My mother came to visit me a few months later. She asked where she could park and I told her the end spot because no cars ever parked there. My mother did so and within minutes this mad woman was at my door demanding we move the car. As I went to do so the irritation on my face must have been evident as when I passed her she stared to Karen-like blather on about her rights. I snapped at her ‘why don’t you just move then?’ and then continued to shift my mother’s vehicle. She left us alone after that but we never dared use her parking spot again, which remained completely vacant until we moved ourselves a few years later.
*Bad Neighbour #2: Toothless Nutcase fakes visit by Prostitute
Reservoir Victoria, Australia, 2000
Second place in Reservoir and had moved in with my now-fiancé. Two units this time, with ours being the one closest to the street. The unit at the back had a husband, wife and wife’s father living in it. Had never spoken to either of the men and to her only a couple of times. She was missing most of her teeth, wore these awful singlets all the time that barely covered her unfortunate physique, and would be constantly hosing down their half of the driveway. Like, constantly – maybe for a couple of hours each day!
I went away for a weekend to visit friends out of town and that evening my fiancé rings me up screaming. Apparently the neighbour woman had come over and given her some story about a blond in an SUV showing up and when I wasn’t home had knocked on her door. This supposed blond was asking where I was and then had left a magazine with the neighbour to pass onto me. The magazine was like the Prostitute Quarterly for Melbourne or something – all articles about the sex trade in Melbourne and lots of ads for brothels. One of these brothel ads had all these different messages to me written around it, things like ‘We love your Goatee’, ‘Come back soon Trevor!’ etc, making it seem like I was a prolific and favoured customer.
Took ages to calm my fiancé down over the phone to get her to look at the facts:
A: If I actually had visited a brothel (which I hadn’t), what kind of brothel would be randomly sending out prostitutes from their business to visit their clients homes uninvited? Was this meant to be some kind of after-sales service? And when people visit a brothel, are they required to give their home address? I’m guessing not.
B: If for some unfathomable reason, when you visited a brothel and for whatever purpose gave them your home address, it was unlikely they would send prostitutes then knocking on neighbours doors and asking to leave incriminating evidence.
It all made zero sense except for someone going out of their way to punk me and I finally got my fiancé to see that. When I confronted the neighbour about it she told me the same story she told my fiancé; a blond in an SUV had turned up looking for me and gave my neighbour the magazine. Then she proceeded to tell me that I shouldn’t be getting married if I was doing that kind of thing. So obviously her intention had been to break up the couple next door, but for what reason I never found out.
A few months later they broke in through our backdoor and stole our TV, I found it pawned at a local Cash Converters.
*Bad Neighbour #3: The Drunken Dog-Beater
Werribee Victoria, Australia, 2001
For a short time I rented a house in Werribee. Not long after moving in a drunk neighbour in his 40’s knocked on the door and asked could I please give him a lift as he really needed to get into town. I was sceptical but obliged, part of the reason being I was only 23 and he was much older than me – I hadn’t gotten a handle of saying no to people my senior as yet. Drove him into town and he insisted on giving me a pack of cigarettes as a thank you.
After that at least twice a week he would show up tipsy on our doorstep asking my partner where I was. She would always lie and say I was out (I was usually tinkering in the shed) and he would protest that I wasn’t because he could see my car there. Guy was obviously in need of a friend but I had no interest in being it.
He had 3 big dogs that would howl all the time, pretty certain he was beating them from the way he would be yelling and the anguished noises they would make. Rang the RSPCA about it and they said there was nothing they could do – was pretty surprised and annoyed by that.
*Bad Neighbour/hood #4: Crime Everywhere!
Broadmeadows Victoria, Australia, 2003
Was living in a block of a dozen units in the cheapest part of the suburb. Don’t know how much of it had to do with my neighbours but I got burgled within a month of moving in, then 6 months later came home to find a stolen car in my parking spot with its inside completely stripped.
Bad Neighbour/Housemates #5: The Dodgy Nurses
Cricklewood London, England, 2004
Lived in a slim, 3-story share house in Cricklewood, London. The two girls that ran the share-house, both nurses, were very dodgy – they waited until we gave our deposit before telling us that if we didn’t find someone to replace us when we decided to move out that they would keep our deposit. They would never give us a receipt for any of the rent we paid so we were pretty sure they were overcharging everyone in the house so that they themselves could live there for free. My girlfriend had small items of jewellery go missing as well so we had to start locking our bedroom door.
We were on the top floor and there was another Aussie that had his bedroom across the hall from ours. He would play the same Dire Straights CD over and over again every single night. You’d just be starting to relax when you’d hear “We gotta move these refrigerators” come blasting out of his room. Idiot used to sit up there drinking beer all night every night listening to the same songs, the cops even turned up once because he was throwing his beer bottles out the window onto the busy street below.
After a month we couldn’t take living there anymore so found someone to take our room and got them to give their deposit straight to us. The nurses were livid, it was obvious they had intended to keep our deposit as well as get the deposit off the next guy. We ended up moving a week early just to get out of there.
*Bad Neighbour #6: Stalked for Sex
Grays Essex, England, 2004
Pushy gay guy that lived across the road stalked me for sex. Full story here.
*Bad Neighbour #7: The Cat Neglecter
Heidelberg West Victoria, Australia, 2005
Neighbour had a cat who he never bothered to feed or look after so I ended up feeding it. He kept it locked outside 24/7 and I would come home to find this cat waiting at my back door crying for a pat and some food. Neighbour saw me putting out a bowl of water for his cat once on a really hot day but said nothing so it was an indication he was probably happy someone else was looking after his animal, saving him the trouble. When I moved out I left a note tacked to the inside of one of the cupboards for the new tenants to find, telling them about the cat and suggesting they may want to pick up where I left off.
Had a break-in there, but my housemate was home so the guy got scared off.
*Bad Neighbour/hood #8: Pigeon Lady
Northcote Victoria, Australia, 2009
The lady living to our right was quite nice, but had big bird boxes full of dozens of pigeons right up against our fence, which irked my wife as she hated pigeons. The thing that used to really annoy us though was she would throw tons of white bread scraps over the fence to our dog, despite being asked several times not to because they were bad for our dogs digestion.
One day came home to find the kid over our back fence was throwing rocks over the fence at the clean washing on our line. Got robbed twice while we lived there, once they stole my laptop, the other time they stole our digital camera which still had all the photo’s from my 30th birthday party on it, so I don’t have a single photo from that night.
*Bad Neighbour/hood #9: Our Nature Strip is his Toilet
Swan Hill Victoria, Australia, 2011
In the small town of Swan Hill in Victoria we had neighbours a few doors down that would have a party every Friday night and be blasting really bad country music in their backyard. Then one night while I was away supervising a camp, two drunk guys decided that one of them couldn’t make it home to use the toilet in time, discussed the issue and decided to take a dump on our nature strip at 3am, my poor wife having to listen to the whole performance in the middle of the night alone in the house.
*Bad Neighbour #10: The Grape-Guns of Wrath
Murrawee Victoria, Australia, 2015
Living on a farm you think you would be safe from bad neighbours but we got one when we bought our first property. Things were OK for the first couple of years, then the neighbours decided they were going to grow grapes. So they got three of these huge scare guns that went off on timers to blast every few minutes to scare the birds off. Problem was that they were so loud you could hear them in our house like they were only a meter away! I looked up the rules regarding scare guns in rural areas and you were only allowed to have one blast every 15 minutes and only between the hours of 7am and 6pm. He had 3 guns on 10 minute timers so there was a blast every 3 minutes or so and would go from 6.55am to 8pm every day. It was like we were living in a warzone and it made life hell, as well as disturbing the sleep of our infant daughter and toddler son.
I finally had enough and went over to complain. When I arrived I found he had put one of the scare guns as close to our property line as was physically possible. When he and I began to argue about it I said to him in a reasonable tone “Look, come over and have a cup of tea and you’ll hear what it sounds like in our kitchen”. That chilled him out a bit and made him more reasonable, but the guns never fully stopped during grape-growing season and we were relieved when we moved away 2 years later.
Thankfully my family and I live in an even more remote part of the country now, where we can only see our neighbours by standing on the veranda and looking into the distance. Lets hope our relatively peaceful existence continues.
Got a bad neighbour story? Pop it in the comments section below!