Posted by sean on January 9, 2019 at 7:37 am in Fun At Home with No Comments


Those Neighbours From Hell documentaries are good, aren’t they? The stories involving crazy individuals, sharing the same street, while fighting like cats and dogs, can be a little frighting at times.

If you have never watched these shows before, they are a little bit like this…

Mr Smith’s new fence blocks out his neighbour, Mr Green’s sunlight. Mr Green burns down the fence.

Mrs Wallis allows her dog, Pebbles, to do his business in Mr Walker’s garden. Mr Walker shoots the dog.

Miss Evans has had a new baby. It cries at night and disturbs her neighbour, Mr Mitchell. I think you know what happened next.

What are these people like? How we laughed!

I have my own troublesome neighbour story. You won’t see me on Channel 5 anytime soon, though. Thankfully, I have been raised to believe that it is wrong to burn down fences and kill family pets.

If I was to have a rivalry with a neighbour, it would be on more of a Homer Simpson and Ned Flanders level. When I say that, I’m on about pre-Season 4 Simpsons; where “heck” was considered swearing and Bart cheating on an IQ Test, was thought to be pushing the boundaries of television decency.

The rivalry started some time ago, when we took in an Amazon delivery for our neighbour. Expecting them to collect their parcel, we left it at the bottom of our stairs for days.

After an entire week, the package was still uncollected and by this point, was starting to gather dust. We decided to do the neighbourly thing, don our courier uniform and deliver the unclaimed box to them. Upon taking it from us, they sheepishly muttered a few words of gratitude.

We let the Amazon issue go and moved on with our lives. However, I was drawn to blog by another act of heinous cheek…

Nobody knows when their rubbish and recycling boxes are going to be collected. It’s the same every January. As the bin men are given Christmas and New Year off, they have to play catch-up, until what feels like Easter.

Monday was bin day. The night before, Claire, Roman and I were happily watching some nitwit blow £93,000 on Who Wants to be a Millionaire, when we heard a noise outside. While Roman and me – the two men of the household – stayed indoors, safe and warm, my brave wife went outside to investigate…

Somebody had placed one of their rubbish bags in our bin! Based upon previous incidents, along with the fact “Flanders” had his front room lights on, the Mulder and Scully in us determined the bin bag fairy was our favourite neighbour!

Why we will never hire a skip

For almost two years, the people of Bath have been limited to just one wheely bin a fortnight, to dispose of their rubbish. While this decision caused outrage and lots of angry letters to the local newspaper, Claire and I didn’t have a problem.

Being a pair of goody-two-shoes, we recycle almost anything that is possible to recycle. Therefore, one wheely bin is generally enough for us – although, admittedly, Claire did take a few bags to the local tip, due to the extended period we faced over Christmas, with no collection.

Like us, all our other neighbours found a way to deal with their Christmas rubbish. So why is Ned Flanders an exception to the rule?

I don’t want to sound like Victor Meldrew – although I know that writing a massive blog on the subject, doesn’t look good for me. I appreciate that people do run out of space in their bin. So why don’t they fecking ask?

Had Flanders shown us some common courtesy, rang our doorbell and asked if he could use our bin, we honestly would have allowed him to (although I cannot guarantee that I wouldn’t have blogged about it).

Maybe next time we will leave a mad fox in the bin – a nice surprise for any unsuspecting Bin Bag Fairy. Or maybe we’ll just completely fill the bin with our rubbish.

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