What is happening on your street WhatsApp?

[Poppingby]

I'm nosey.

On mine, somebody is asking whether a wandering cat is lost (answer: no, as usual) and someone else's delivery has been nicked from outside their house. They are warning us to rethink our safe places.

I recommend 'welcome to the neighbourhood ' on BBC sounds 😁

Do owls run? 🤣 I’m way too invested in this owl…

Yep we're the planning objection brigade at the moment.

We live on a long lane with only 6 houses miles apart so minimal drama. Until house 3 sold about a month ago and the new owners moved in, and me being the stupid woman I am invited them to join the group. Every. Single. Day. I regret my choices.

"What was that noise?"
"I think the lights just flickered"
"Was that a tractor or a combine?"
"Who's car was that? I didn't recognise the sound"
"Does anyone have a lemon? I need it for my recipe"
"Anyone?"
"Would a lime work?"
"Does anyone need anything from town?"
"Anyone?"
"I'm going into marks and sparks so let me know"
"??"
"The electrics have been off for 23 minutes now!"
"Has someone ordered from amazon? There's a van coming up the road"
"it's not Dave or Steve, Jane it must be for you"
"Yes, Jane they're at your gates"
"Dave do you have visitors? There's a silver car outside your house"
"Just to let you all know my sister is visiting, so don't panic if you see a red car outside my house, it's just my sister who is visiting me"

It drives me mad but is also the height of entertainment for DH and I who can see her front gate from our bedroom window, and we can see her eagerly running out of her house to observe a suspicious car or check the coast is clear before she crosses the treacherous road. Her husband is on the group but never posts! The poor man, he must be sitting very still so she doesn't ask him questions.

Kinda hope she's on here so she gets the hint so I won't even name change

Ohhhh. I’ll share this with DH who manages to both vocally dislike gossip whilst also being the biggest gossip in the family. They do have a houseful at the moment with adult children moved back in…. Not one to say publicly though!

Our street WhatsApp is full of mis-delivered parcels, missing cats, queries about whether the electric has gone off for everyone and offers of home grown fruit/surplus or grown out of toys. Started in March 2020, I love it, I've given away plenty of toys to neighbours, and received some donations for food bank or baby bank too. We have a great relationship with our next door neighbours, and often loan bits or take in parcels for each other, but I know were we ill and housebound someone on the street would willingly pick up bread or a prescription for me.

We don’t have a street group but there is a local one that was set up during lockdown, currently it’s full of people looking to get scrap took away, the usual array of robustly healthy, clearly well cared for ‘stray’ cats who are clearly lost and not just chancing there arm on getting some food by hanging around looking mournful and someone who needs to borrow a metal detector.

We don’t have one. Thank God!

Three new houses built in a back garden. Every lane is Oak something and they are Oak Crescent so parcels constantly being delivered to the wrong house.

And now there must be a new chap on the milk delivery as the daily pints are being mis delivered.

Missing parcels and pictures of doorsteps to be identified . Talk about the infestations of glis glis that seem to be invading the road and who is taking what action against them!

We don’t have one. I briefly joined the local Facebook group but it was full of lost pets

I have left the village's Facebook page as it was full of my cat.

I have a white cat with one black ear and round her eye. Very distinctive. She's also a fat cat as she cons at least four elderly neighbours into feeding her.

"Does anyone recognise this cat? I think he's lost."
"No Dave, she's not lost. She's my cat, just as she was the last 2728362927 times you posted a photo of her crossing the grass toward Old Bob's house where she gets fed. Shes not lost when you take photos of her crossing back the way either."

And when she's running she's not spooked or frightened or lost, it's because she's a weirdo in cat terms and will only shit in a litter box in a certain position in the kitchen so belts back home when she needs.

I took an '8' before for my son. It was part of an '80'... I took the '0' and also the 'happy birthday nan' balloons.
My son was not overly impressed. I laughed though 😅

Everyone’s sharing Ring doorbell footage - apparently a bloke rode round the estate on his bike three times and ‘looked suspicious’.

We had one to try and work out who was responsible for sunken paving slabs on the shared walkway. No one it seems.
Then it was just moaning about residents not in our little corner parking in visitor spots.
I left before I turned into an irate curtain twitcher.

We used to have a FB group then it moved to WhatsApp. It took me years, honestly about three, to figure out how to join it. Someone was like message X and ask for a link. They either never responded or I couldn't get the link to work. This went on for ages. When I first joined I was then massively underwhelmed 😂

We have an ongoing drama about someone throwing cigarette butts over their balcony. The culprit hasn't been identified but there's been photo evidence and anger emojis have been added.

There's also the ongoing who's tried to dismantle an entire bed and put it in the bin store for the bin men, we all get charged for it, how selfish.

Plus we had who hasn't broken up their cardboard boxes and has left them on top of the bins. Someone replied to say it was their friends who had been visiting who they'd asked to take the rubbish down and they hadn't broken it up.

Haha and yes I'm just parking here for two minutes, don't report me etc.

It is busy but occasionally a goldmine of excellent gossip and the odd spat.

Plus it’s a very useful way to find out about events & road closures and plumbers, cleaners, decorators etc.

Ours is nice then it will go nuts for half a day.
Eg
Neighbour posting photo from his security camera warning people of men with guns who came to his door in the middle of the night.
I said was he sure the time and date was correct as I had seen police who looked like that at his door a few weeks ago.
He got annoyed back at me.
Then another neighbour posted that they had it on good authority that the guns were glocks and therefore they were definitely police.
There's a bit more to the story but I'll repsect his privacy. Needless to say he knew it was the police, he just wanted to share the stress with the whole street. (Obviously I dont live in UK)

Somebody has found a key, somebody else is trying to set a date for a street yard sale next spring, no replies to either of them.
Somebody thanked an unknown person...they had returned from a trip to discover a long lost garden ornament had been left at their doorstep.

Ours is currently almost entirely random posts from the self-appointed ruler of the village whose perceived control- actually everyone rolling their eyes and letting them have their way about things that didn't matter rather than deal with the pouting and passive aggressive sadness - has slipped due to their bad behaviour over something that did matter. After the push-back on an ill-advised unpleasant message revealed that they were in a distinct minority on this issue, they are now waging a campaign of performative niceness, by keeping us all updated with everything Nice in the area, and making sure we are all aware of the Niceness of the fields and skies around us, with suitably Nice pictures. Sometimes there is humorous Niceness by way of funny things their adult children have sent them. Occasionally someone relents and posts a thumbs up emoji but people are otherwise unmoved by all the Nice.

We don't have one. I hopefully moving to a more rural setting, perhaps there will be one there? Will have to be careful with sausage finger typos😅

Was it a gnome?

I got told off by the local Hyacinth Bucket for referring to our street as "the street" instead of "the avenue". I moved in a year ago and I'm obviously bringing down the neighbourhood! 😅

I was only seeing if anybody wanted our old moving boxes...

I refused to join ours husband has, he occasionally reads out the more eccentric ones. Because I'm not in the group I can honestly look blankly at any neighbours that accost me.

One neighbour phoned us and others at 3am to relay the news that a dog had just 💩 on the pavement. He hates dogs. I think he's got cameras everywhere with audio. He works from home if his wife is in the garden and a neighbour stops to chat he comes to the front door glares and she scuttles in.