Neighbours

No, not the Australian soap, unfortunately - the real folk who live next door.

On one side, we have an absolutely lovely family who are renting the house and we have become good friends. On the other side, we have a couple, and they are a pain in the you-know-where. We put our verandah up a couple of years ago, and they complained to the council, so a nice enforcement officer had to come out and look at it - it was fine as we knew it would be, but she still caused hassle. Then there was the cockerel issue - the first complaint was someone else, but the second was her. And now, it's the woodburner. The letter that came from the council today says that we are causing a smoke nuisance!

We are amused and angered by this, as we haven't actually had it alight for the last 5 months, so she is obviously more worried about the smoke which might come out over the winter than the smoke which has been non-existent all summer. The chap I spoke to on the phone couldn't actually say much about it as he knew little - as long as we burn clean wood which doesn't make dark smoke, he doesn't see that there is a problem, and is quite willing to come and look at our smoke!!

It angers us that someone thinks that they have the right to dictate to us what we can do in our own home - we investigate these things before we do them and we know that we are allowed to do them before we invest our time, effort and money in doing them. All these letters keep raising the FH's blood pressure each time, and my itchy feet just get more and more itchy! I spent the afternoon on the internet looking for alternative houses! I am getting to the stage where I don't feel that I want to live next to such an interfering busybody.....