You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
Dammit I forgot the winky smiley yet again 😉
Every time she lights up at the back door, ring the front door bell and run away, keep doing it and hopefully you’ll subconsciously train her to smoke out the front instead
No, not really, my advice is pretend you live alongside other people, that they live their lives independently to your requirements will comes as less of shock that way.
I’d like to see your response to a new neighbour playing drum’n’bass until the early hours, lights huge bonfires in the garden or who’s hobby is building racing cars in his back yard and revving the engine repeatedly.
That last one isn’t far fetched, a family moved into the house just opposite about six or seven years ago, and the husband, Dan, builds banger racing cars, and who would literally sit revving the engine for fifteen-twenty minutes at a time. On his front garden facing us. It used to drive Joey nuts.
Get back to us, let us know what your reaction would be…
Dan, builds banger racing cars, and who would literally sit revving the engine for fifteen-twenty minutes at a time. On his front garden facing us. It used to drive Joey nuts.
You probably shouldn't have bought a house on a council estate, tbh, it comes with the territory!
Perhaps you should move to the Costwolds?
They know it annoys you, they've bound to have seen you shut the windows when they have a fag. They either don't give a @@@@ or worse, get pleasure in annoying you.
You can ask them politely but I don't think they'll stop, you could threaten them but you're better than this and also don't want to end up with them calling the police on you or even worse, getting into a scuffle.
Short term plan is to take a gift around and explain nicely about the smoking, but I reckon the only way long term is to befriend them..... Or move.
Goodness me, and I thought cat 💩 in the garden was controversial, it’s got nothing on this.
Dunno about controversial, I just scoop it up with a trowel or bit of wood and lob it back over the fence onto the grass surrounding the flats where the cats come from. Quite why their cats don’t shit on their grass I haven’t worked out so far.
Nope. 20 years ago I smoked approximately 35 a day. But since giving I haven’t embraced the anti-smoking zeal of many other former smokers.
Quite the Saint, ain’t you!
Dress as a giant nicotine patch or packet of nicotine gum and block their door whilst berating them and espousing the evils of big tobacco.
Dress up as the grim reaper and beckon them over..... That'll teach em, or kill em.
I quite like the vape idea, as well as the 'bum' fags off them every time they're out there.
But the winner is........ A giant external industrial fan that is activated by a movement sensor, which blows directly away from the op's window. Subtle it would not be.
Every time she lights up at the back door, ring the front door bell and run away, keep doing it and hopefully you’ll subconsciously train her to smoke out the front instead
That is a good idea. May not make her stop doing it but will be funny to watch.
Some weird responses in this thread.
I once had some neighbours who did this.
Because their flat had been converted and some rooms/doors/windows switched around, their back door didn’t open into the garden like everyone else’s, but instead opened into the side return outside our bedroom window (and the kids’ bedroom window, and the bedroom windows of two other flats).
They’d stand outside smoking (sometimes chatting) late in the evenings a few metres from our beds. It was pretty annoying.
We popped round and asked if they could move out into the garden, and they did. Nice people. They were just quite young, most people they knew smoked, and they didn’t have kids - they hadn’t thought about it
It still stank, obviously, because fag smoke travels so far, but it was a lot better.
Get back to us, let us know what your reaction would be…
Cool, I live the gangster hood that is Chorlton, a few weeks ago, my beauty sleep was disturbed by what looked like the entire local plod shop coming to bust a drug house round the corner....
OK, so Drum and Bass? We've a student rental next door, I know the landlord, their lease wasn't renewed, but then they were also massive assholes, so it wan't a tricky one, bonfires? this is suburban Manchester, shit like that doesn't happen around here, racing cars? for ages now my street has been a rat run to avoid some traffice works on the main road, and again, this is a city, so yeah the 3am popping Fiesta is just a wake-up.
Look, just because the OP doesn't like the smell of fags isn't just cause to ask his neighbour to move along like she's some riff-raff off the street. It just isn't. Don't like the smell? tough, that's life with neighbours. It's not like she's flinging cat shit over your fence, she's just having a fag on her own doorstep. She's not doing anything illegal, or wrong, you just don't like it, and that's just being an adult as opposed to child moaning that the peas are touching the potato and expecting something to be done about it. What'll you do if something actually important happens?
Don’t like the smell? tough, that’s life with neighbours
Not in my experience. I've always got on with mine and found a little reasonableness and accommodation is reciprocated and that most people muddle along just fine.
If I was inadvertently doing something which was irritating my neighbour I wouldn't take the hump if they made me aware of it (it was only a little bonfire and the wind changed after I lit it - soz)!
just because the OP doesn’t like the smell of fags isn’t just cause to ask his neighbour to move along like she’s some riff-raff off the street. It just isn’t.
Sure it is.
It would be out of order to demand that they move, but there's no harm in politely asking.
As for "entitlement,"
You don't know people's circumstances. My partner's daughter is severely asthmatic and suffers from anxiety attacks. If she has an episode, one feeds into the other and it can get messy. One of her primary triggers (though there are others) is cigarette smoke.
It's not just a 'bad smell' (which would be antisocial enough), exposure to smoking with the sort of regularity described by the OP could hospitalise her.
Edit - Actually, no. I'm out
You know the difference between asking politely, accepting the possibility of a polite 'no, sorry' and demanding? Isn't that how reasonable people behave? Would you take offence if your neighbour politely made you aware of something you were doing that was irritating them?
Edit to say this post makes no sense now the one above has been deleted.
You don’t know people’s circumstances. My partner’s daughter is severely asthmatic and suffers from anxiety attacks. If she has an episode, one feeds into the other and it can get messy. One of her primary triggers (though there are others) is cigarette smoke.
Most people are reasonable, including those who smoke, I am sure that in all likelihood the OP's neighbour would be accommodating if it was explained to them that this was the case.
If one has noisy neighbours then yes its annoying, I actually don't mind the children next door, they are outside shouting and having fun, getting some fresh air and exercise, I don't mind their weekly bbqs in the summer, I don't even mind their dogs barking when ever someone passes or goes near their house.
What I do mind is their smoking coming up through our windows (the prevailing wind blows it this way). I have a workroom in the attic and fresh air is necessary for ventilation. I don't need the stench and smoke from the various rubbish they decide to suck into their lungs going into my lungs, or over customer's expensive goods.
OP you have my sympathy and if you do go round and have a friendly word I hope it goes well, it didn't for us.
Also like someone posted earlier, I collected up all their stubbs that they preferred to throw into our garden and threw them back over the hedge (along with their other rubbish). Luckily they've grown up a bit and no longer do this.
I don't think I have the right to judge what other people do/don't/should/shouldn't find annoying. I don't particularly like cigarette smoke, but the smell of stale cigar smoke literally makes me want to puke, genuinely. I'm sure there are lots of people on here who think stale cigar smoke is fine, but it has that effect on me. Similarly the sound of a brush on concrete sets my teeth and most of my neurons on edge.
So yes, tolerance is good, but having regard for other people, including neighbours, cuts both ways. There's a certain irony that the tolerance police on here - 'Get over yourself, it's just harmless smoke' - don't seem to be very tolerant.
I think all the OP can do is ask nicely, choose a point when you're not really pissed off, and explain in a non-confrontational way that they find the smell intrusive. If that doesn't work, close kitchen window and try to be compassionate.
so why are they smoking outside if they don't realise it stinks like shit?
"choose a point when you’re not really pissed off, and explain in a non-confrontational way that they find the smell intrusive. If that doesn’t work, close kitchen window and try to be compassionate."
Compassionate?
With whom?
Can they not smoke inside, with all the windows and doors shut? Theyre wasting it, otherwise?
Rural option: Buy a farm and spread slurry everyday they have their washing out and they’re not in. That’ll learn them.