CF allotment thief part 3: The ‘plot’ thickens and auditions begin for the west end musical

[YaMuvva]

Just creating one now before t’other fills up. Will post updates when I have them

Last thread https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5048540-cf-allotment-thief-part-2-the-battle-of-barbara-and-the-beansprouts?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=share

Yes, it belongs to Eileen and Norris. (OP and husband)
They have established ownership and it's not a council allotment.

Yes, it's owned by OP

@CaptainMyCaptain - responding to you on my post about the OP checking the allotment before exchanging: she should have done and asked whether the shed was going to be left in situ for one thing. Not irrelevant at all. Likewise with the garage, ask the seller to make sure all the boxes are moved.

I wish I still lived at home (Yorkshire) I’d be there to help you to help Barb gerrroooofff your land. 👩‍🌾

Sigh...

Yet another shameless placemark..

Absolutely loving the username! 😁😁

Poor Babs 😟

Behave.

Signing in!

Never!

I'm inclined to volunteer my son and his friend to write the musical for you all.

(They've already written one which has just had its second amateur production, the sky's the limit! 😁)

Couldn't agree more. Someone responded to me on the other thread (I noted the previous owner could have legally gifted Barbara the allotment if she wanted her to have it) suggesting that Barbara and the previous owner were 'of the generation' where they left the men to deal with the legal stuff. Come on! Asking a solicitor to deal with a transfer deed is hardly more onerous than asking them to sell the house. Barbara knows it's not her land and she'd just bet (rashly) on OP not caring - and so did the previous owner. They're reaping what they sowed.

Fuck that!

I know we've moved on to a much more light-hearted approach to this, but I'm still astounded by the number of MNers who think you're in the wrong.

It's like buying a house where someone lives in your back garden. They buggered off for the viewings (as who would buy a house with someone living in the garden), but on moving day there they are with their tent erected, camp stove on and washing out.

Is the consensus as they have no where else to pitch their tent and they've been doing it there for years that they 'morally own' the garden and you just get on with your life around the now-irked garden dweller!?

Or a pub is converted to flats. But Old Jimmy met his now deceased wife in that pub and has every week for 40 years had a pint at the bar in her memory. Now someone lives there, he still turns up (now bringing his own can of beer) and sits at their dining room table to have a drink 8pm every Friday, and the new owners should be buying pork scratchings to make sure he's suitably comfortable - because morally he's be patronising that spot for years, so it's his for between 8 and 9 on a Friday night.

Yes, you should've checked for vacant possession. You didn't, and the consequence is you now have this headache. How could the rational consequence possibly be that you just let Babs have the land!?

Barbara should be angry at the seller for selling the land without having the courtesy to tell her.

No, no, no.
I suspect there's more to this story than meets the eye 😉

If there's horseradish on that allotment, don't bother trying to dig it up. You will fail.

I’m here until the end! This thread has bean on my mind and I need to know how it ends!

I would like the film version to use poetic licence, and that Barbara becomes so determined to keep the allotment she seduces OP's husband, and the two of them run off into the allotment-sunset to farm together, leaving the OP living in a studio flat in a tower block.

OP, I of course hope this does not happen in real life - but I suspect the inevitable next step of getting solicitors involved and having this settled legally won't draw in the box-office numbers you'll need to pay your Siobhan Finneran legal fees.

You could be here a while.

What a wonderful thread... OK, all you adverse possession worriers, there is none as the previous owner gave Bouncing Babs permission to use it... so that clock would only start to run once lithesome and lovely OP bought the house.

Now more importantly, who is to play Babs, the answer is obvious, Helen Mirren... year above my sister at school (which makes her 79, although she does tend to draw a veil over that) and she probably has the Barbour and tweeds at the back of the wardrobe from Calendar Girls. Added to which she will be able to play any scenes where she moans about it all at the WI, with experience... also if we add in a sunbathing scene on the lotty, she is not averse to whipping her kit off much to the chagrin of nuns at the Convent... Caligula came out when I was in school and their allegiance passed to Anne Stallybrass in the Onedin Line. Mind you due to her age, we need to get this started PDQ, so to this end, I suggest an honesty box next to the harvested veg to start the crowd funding.

I can’t believe no one has drawn a diagram. This is outrageous.

Also I want to know about the elderly Korean lady. What was that thread?

And can I come and visit the allotment on my holidays? I won’t stay. I’ll just take photos of it and claim my DNA shows 1.8% Yorkshire allotment ancestry. And attempt to buy one of your tea towels as a souvenir.

Barbara has had nine months. The only things established before that time that could still be growing in the plot are fruit bushes or trees that she should have moved during their winter dormancy, artichokes (either kind), easy to move right now, assorted herbs, easy to move right now, and rhubarb, at its peak, should have been moved when the plot went up for sale.

There might be some purple sprouting broccoli that needs eating up (lucky Barbara) but that's it. Anything else got planted after the true owner put the plot up for sale, and she was chancing her arm. She is trying it on because she has got away with being bulldozer Babs in the past.

I totally believe the set up (as I've said, saw something not dissimilar happen), but do point out that if it was fiction, in an American cop show she'd have been using the shed to cook meth, and it would blow up most dramatically at a critical moment.

"Also I want to know about the elderly Korean lady. What was that thread?"

Here you go:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/mumsnet_classics/2154580-There-is-a-tiny-elderly-Korean-lady-in-my-garden-and-I-want-to-go-out

I'm not sure Babs would know it's not her land. Her friend gave it to her and therefore didn't advertise it as part of the house sale. Not everyone is knowledgeable enough about the legal system to realise it would depend on what was on the deeds, not on what was advertised for sale on Rightmove and by the estate agent. I do feel sorry for her.

We have no idea whether the owner was Babs' friend or her victim. Either way, Babs has had nine months to come to terms with the fact that the plot is now going to belong to a stranger, and that she needs to move out.