Unit 4 Relationships

Text2 • Neighbours

The best neighbour I ever had was an Italian restaurant. Emergency lasagne available night and day, change for the launderette on Sundays, a permanent 5 door-keeper against gatecrashers and policemen with parking tickets. Even if our fourth tloor bath water did run dry every time they filled up the Expresso machinę, I miss diem still.

10 Bad neighbours can blight a house worse than dry rot but there is no insurance against them, no effective barricades in the compulsory intimacy e.xcept a decent caution and conversation 15 ruthlessly restricted to matters of meteorology. And it only takes a tiny breach in the wali of platitudes to unleash appalling dramas of persccution and passion.

20 And what can be done if the people next door brecd maggots or wake up to the Body Snatchers (or some otherpunk group) in ąuadrophonic or poison the cat with their sług doom? What happens 25 when one man^łs trumpet practice is another’s thumping headache, when two neighbouring life styl es arc just incompatible? There are three basie responses to what the law calls Nuisance: 30 surrender, retaliate or sue.

Joan and Andrew live next to a coupic who have been having screaming, shouting and banging fights two or three times a week for the best part of five 35 years. 'It sometimes gets so bad that our whole house shakes, pictures rattle on the wali,’ saidjoan. She has tried sympathetic chats, face to face confrontation and cven recourse to the local social senices 40 department and the police when she feared that the child of the family might be at risk. ‘Every time I say something, she is apologetic but says she can’t help it. I don^łt think the child is subject to 45 physical abuse, but the verbal onslaughts arc frightful. ltis worrying as w^rell as infuriating but it seems there’s nothing to be done. There would be no point in bringing an action against them, it’s just 50 how^r they are.’

Retaliation - or crash for crash - is a dangerous gamę which calls for nerves of Steel and considerableperseycrance. Itis a winner take all strateg}' from which 55 there is no turning back, because it becomes a war of escalation and the side

from ‘What can be dmie if the peopk next door breed maggots...

which is prepared to go nuclear wins. MichaePs neighbour in Surrey madę every summer afternoon noxious with the 60 sound ofhis motor mow^rer. Negotiations got nowhere so Michael bought an electric hedge trimmer and plied it right where the neighbouEs wife liked to sunbathe. Neighbour opened up with a 65 chain saw. Michael lit bonfires fuli of wet Ieaves when the wind was westcrly. Neighbour left his car engine running with the exhaust pointing through the fence. Michael served an ultimatum:

70 either an end to hostilitics or he would sow a plantation of ground elder right along his side of the hedge. Legał, but a lethal threat to ncighbouEs w'ell-tended acre and a half. Mowing now takes place 75 on weekday evenings and the weekends are silent.

There are two main arcas where the law has a role: in boundary disputes where the title deeds are not elear and in 80 cases of nuisance from noisc or fumes or some other persistent interference in someone’s peaceful enjoyment of their home. The remedies available in case of nuisance are either an injunction -85 a court order to stop it - or damages in compensation for the victim’s suffering.

There is only one thing worse than having to take your neighbour to court,

90 and that is letting your fury' build up so long that you lose your temper and end up in the dock yourself like Mrs Edith Holmes of Huntingdon who was driven mad by her neighbour’s incessant 95 hammering, drilling and other DIY activities between 7.30 and 11.30 every night. She ended up throwing a brick through his done~it~himself double glazing and had to plead guilty to criminal 100 damage. A merciful magistrate gave her a conditional discharge and allowed only £35 of her neighboubs £70.41 claim for compensation. The neighbour, he said, w^ras an cxpert and could do his own 105 repairs.

But judges and ten-foot walls and conciliation and bribery can only do so much. In this one vital area of Iiving you are entirely at the mercy of luck, which 110 may deai you a curse or a blessing regardless of any attempts to arrange things otherwise.

' by Liz Porgan in the Guardian