Weird stuff that your neighbours do

Ridiculous – the sooner we get American style home owner associations in the UK the better. They would have the power to ban this madness. Bikes are for looking pretty hung on the garage wall not for riding (next to my canoes, kayaks, kites, tents etc).

Be very, very careful what you wish for: HOA’s often tend to attract the worst kind of reactionary little nazi who makes it their entire life’s work to impose their every demand on everyone in the community. Every aspect of the community and their lives will be controlled and any tiny infraction of whatever random rules imposed will be fined heavily.

Be very, very careful what you wish for:

I was assuming the comment was in no way intended to be serious, for precisely the reasons you set out

I’ll be honest, I’m with your wife on this one.

Sat on the mat?

I was assuming the comment was in no way intended to be serious, for precisely the reasons you set out

Honestly, it’s not always easy to tell, I’ve just read far too many horror shows of what HOA residents have to deal with, because everyone suffers, not just someone next door.

My late partner used to get very cross with the next door neighbours on one side, because they were very loud, and had small, very yappy dogs that they’d chuck out into the garden and shut the door, leaving them outside for hours yapping at everything that moved.

They have another one now, that yaps at stupid o’clock at night when the hedgehogs trot through their garden.

She also got cross about Dan over the road, who built racing cars for banger-type racing. He bought MOT failures, and gutted them, putting in crash cages and doing full prep, which unfortunately involved using whizz-wheels and a fair amount of banging, and revving the engine. Her annoyance was perfectly understandable, tbh. He’s a nice bloke, and he’s got a lovely family, one of his lads has a Micra which he’s building up as a race car like his dad’s; he’s about eight! Fortunately, Dan has a unit on an industrial site where I used to work, plus access to several lockups, so things are much quieter these days.

We had a young lad move in across the road. His folks had bought him the house and were obviously wedged turning up in their Austin Martin and Bentley occasionally. The house was a revolving door of ladies of the night and drug dealers.

His folks had bought him the house and were obviously wedged turning up in their Austin Martin

Posh allegro?

In the nine months we've lived here, I'm puzzled by the single middle-aged woman who lives next door. It's a 4-bed semi (having been extended to the side), front garden, drive, garage, and a long back garden. She only lives there one night every week. Maybe once every fortnight. It's not a regular night. No pattern. Usually comes home late at night, and is gone the next day. The garage is clearly full of something, as there's a rotting MkII Golf parked on the drive in front of it which never moves. When she does come home she parks her Lupo on-street across my drive, blocking my access. Never once seen her in her back garden. It's left 'to seed', but one day last June she clearly hired a gardener for the morning who embarked on a major defoliation program and napalmed most of it. Carries out zero maintenance on the house. Even my untrained eye can spot several problems that need attention. Or will do soon.

She nice enough, and we've had chats out the front of the house, but...

Why own a big 4-bed house (must be pushing £0.5m) but never live there? Why not at least get one or two lodgers? Or why not fully rent it out if you're clearly living somewhere else?

Wild-ass guess based on experience from work would be that she lives elsewhere (possibly some distance away) and the house and car actually belong to a parent/elderly relative that is now in residential or nursing care. She could be staying there occasionally to save on hotel bills when visiting said relative. Renting houses out or selling them while the in-care elderly owners are still alive seems to be an absolute minefield for care fees, IHT etc.

There are thousands (probably tens of thousands) of houses around the country sitting rotting away for just this very reason. Sad and bloody frustrating given the shortage of housing across the country.

ETA: the maintenance issues may stem from there not being enough funds in the owners accounts (assuming proper financial POA is in place) to do much. It could be at the mercy of when/if the family can spare the funds to do anything.

Yep. For insurance reasons she will have to be there, usually at least once a month.  But getting a place fit to rent is a huge amount of work and expense and if she or the owner doesn't have the cash it's difficult

Seeing the Austin Martin above reminds me of a guy who occasionally works on jobs once or twice a year and he kept going on about the Austin Martin best cars on the planet to the customers who had one but no one would correct him as he's a bit of a flash nkob with his brand new diesel Audi

He does landscaping and always tries to call all plants by their Latin name to impress but I've heard him saying to a woman once we can put a  "buxom bush" either side of the gate for you rather than buxus bush

He's like a del boy with his malapropisms

Once.

Any more hilarious examples?