Complaining about Village life?

We’ve had people calling the police for a man in a field with a gun. Yes, that would be a farmer
There was an excellent thread on here about a similar scenario. It was a long time ago, but if I remember correctly the non-rural person took umbrage at being told that calling the police on a local farmer for having a gun on his land is probably not going to help them fit into the village.

Quite. I grew up in a tiny village but now live in the suburbs of a large town. My folks come to visit and sit enjoying the quiet.

I remember back in the late 80s our local free paper (The Blackmore Vale Magazine) would always feature one letter a week from new people complaining about smells/muck spreading/noises. They didn’t call it Idiot of the Week but the letter was always in the same spot on the letters page.

The hunt are trespassing on your land and the bloodthirsty scrotes get away with it because people don't complain. Know your rights and do something about it 😡

I swear all villages are the same, there’s always complaints about normal village life lol!

He had bought a barn conversion by the way.

Guy in my DM’s village complained that a farm (about 1/3 mile up the road from his house) had the temerity to use milking equipment which he could hear when he had his windows open! He sold up within a year!

Reading this thread has made me so happy I live in smoggy salford! 🤣

If it's actually your land, not rented, you can refuse access to the hunt. They may moan about you, but they should respect it. Hunts do exist by the permission of landowners, and if they are trashing your land and upsetting your animals, then there's no need to allow them on your land.

If it's a farmer's land and you rent it it is a little different, but they still shouldn't be trashing the place and should be letting you know that they are coming well in advance.

If there's one particular route, or e.g. one field you'd be willing to allow them to go through, then do speak to the huntmaster and discuss it with them, because they're very likely to be amenable.

There are lots of hunts now that have terrible control over their hounds and really upset livestock, or cause issues on the roads- then the hunts moan they lose access to the land- it's hardly surprising!

Things being necessary or common doesn’t make them pleasant. I grew up in a town surrounded by farming and plenty of people who had lived there all their lives (including my grandfather) moaned about muck spreading and Church bells. Surely people are just blowing off a little steam?

Our village Facebook group is brilliant for this.

”warning to all residents, this man was seen on our cctv at 4 this morning walking around near our house”

“Yes, he’s the milkman”

Here it's the RAF and the USAF rattling the roof tiles regularly, visitors look shocked at my lack of reaction!
One of the funniest village story is from a long time ago, someone bought a cottage on a village green, next to the pub The Cricketers then spent the whole summer complaining about cricket balls flying round.

We live on the coast- our street has new people who have compained about:
a) Foghorn
b) The smell of fish on the fish quay
c) How high, high tide was one day and how low, low tide was (How are they supposed to know when it's going to be what?)
d) Salt on the breeze when it was very foggy, leaving salt marks on their newly washed car (just washes off)

Sometimes you just want to whinge to blow off steam, but silly whining about the basics of life always baffled me. I live in a busy, popular tourist city, and it'd be like me saying "There are always new people about! Can't anything be done?" It's so true that aging doesn't automatically make one a sensible adult.

Thanks for the replies! I see what you mean re hamlet with no amenities versus village with a pub etc. Yes, that does indeed sound like farmland with a few houses in a clump in the middle. I'm thinking All Creatures Great and Small right now! It sounds very bucolic (to this uninformed townie!). The history of how these regions and areas came to be is so interesting.

We get parking, fireworks, wood burning stoves and wondering if a cat is missing because it’s in someone’s garden. All standard parts of city living

Hilarious. I can only imagine the mocking that ensued.

You do realise donkeys come from Mediterranean areas and aren't very good at insulating themselves from rain and are probably better suited to hot weather (so long as they have shelter) than wet

@Raincloudsonasunnyday
From my perspective a hamlet is a small group of houses, smaller than a village with no amenities such as pub, church, school or shop.

@Emotionalsupportviper
@Mummyoflittledragon
The hedge was on their property but had been there for as long as anyone can remember. The mention of the minion fridge has reminded me that I still have the remains of a tumble dryer that caught fire that can be added to the pile.
@Raincloudsonasunnyday
Not sure how I can prove the existence of a hamlet surrounded by farmland without outing myself entirely. I can't imagine that the farm was ever part of a bigger estate, name of farm and field names don't suggest anything that grand. I've tried (not very hard) to find some history but I've not had much luck. The current farmhouse dates from early 1800's and there is a cottage that was most likely the original house. There are 2 former farm houses nearby and a barn conversion, the rest of the houses are small cottages. I suspect, that rather than being a larger estate being broken up, a number of smaller holdings have joined together. In fact we rent 1 small field that is completely surrounded by our fields with no access other than crossing our fields.

Oh and farmers do muck-spread selectively. We have caravan clubs use our village hall for weekend meets. I can tell when to expect them because the local farmer will muck spread the adjacent field on the Friday afternoon they were arriving just to give them an authentic country feel.

FARNHAM'S town hall clock is once again ringing out over Castle street, a week after the historic landmark's owners silenced its chimes following a solitary complaint to the council.

The plight of the clock, which had chimed every quarter of an hour for 146 years before last week's intervention, has made national headlines after The Herald's lead story last week.
The Daily Telegraph and BBC Radio 5 Live are among those to have covered the story, as well as BBC South Today which interviewed the man behind the campaign to restore the chimes, Kiran Davies, on Monday.
Kiran said: "I'm really happy and didn't expect to be able to turn the chimes back on so soon. I never imagined it would attract as much publicity as it had done. My phone's been ringing non-stop!"

There was uproar, turned out it was a DFL who was renting, not even buying. I am reliably informed that they didn't hang around at the end of the rental period.😂

People power and they climbed down after less than one week. 😆

We had one this morning, tractors driving up her lane, going far too fast. I have been stuck behind “fast” tractors for 35 yrs, never experienced one going over 30mph. I suspect that her car was capable of and was travelling at speed.
We had a rep from the Campaign for rural England speak at the Parish Council AGM a few years back. A pressure group of townies who have moved to the country and want a return to their idea of the rural ideal. We all sat there trying not to make eye contact because she was hilarious.
She didn’t want HGVs on country lanes. Most HGVs are servicing farms, the country lanes they use wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for farms.
But the sniggering started when she suggested moving egg farms ( battery variety) to industrial estates in built up areas where the smell wouldn’t be so intrusive.
The “don’t allow cockerels to crow before 8am” and “muck spreading is offensive “ brigade get short shrift locally.
We live close to a well known safari park. On a still night you can hear the lions roaring. They have lots of complaints from people who move to the area. Me, I love to stand in the garden on a warm summer night and listen to the lions. If you close your eyes you could be in the Serengeti. In fact I did it last night it was so still and warm and the lions were roaring.

I grew up in a town, went to uni in a city then moved on to a road and the way out of a small town. It’s fairly remote and sheep have roaming rights on the roads but loads of people move into the area and then do nothing but complain about the sheep crossing the roads and insist the farmers should install fences so they can carry on driving like loons.

Bottom right would be "if this is not aloud" surely?

My favourite (from the days before the internet) was a woman who complained in the local paper that 'It's like war-torn Beirut round here on a Sunday morning.'

She'd bought a cottage next to a pub which hosted a clay pigeon shoot. She wanted it stopped.

My husband shot there regularly, & I even shot there once - I had to borrow a 20-bore & was absolutely useless, as I'd trained in prone rifle shooting with paper targets, so couldn't make myself lead.😂But that's a whole other story.