Anyone else have a neighbour that monitors everyone?

[Popcorntimewatchingdrama]

So, we finally moved into the new estate have been there for a year. Everyone’s settling in, the vibes are great, and life is pretty mundane… except for our self-appointed “Sheriff of the Estate”. She’s always been pretty active on the WA group, god forbid a bin isn’t emptied on time or something or a dog wees on a lamppost nothing to do with us. We try to live and let live but be really respectful of others.

Apparently, we have a neighbour who has decided—unprompted and unpaid—to be the CEO of her own Neighbour Watch. She’s out there recording cinematic masterpieces of everyone arriving and leaving the estate, we’ve only just found this out.

Things hit a fever pitch this week while we were (thankfully) away. Now, keep in mind: we all have massive drives (2–3 cars easily), wide roads, and plenty of visitor bays. But someone dared to park on the street opposite our house for—wait for it—3 hours and 16 minutes. Absolutely nothing to do with us- our adult and quiet children said our drive wasn’t blocked or hers or anything.

Cue the frantic texts to us. She sent us the “surveillance footage,” mentioned she knew we were on holiday because she watched us pack our rucksacks on Saturday morning (not creepy at all!), and demanded to know whose car it was and exactly when we’d be back.

My husband, bless him, replied: “Not our car. or anything to do with us or our family. Was it blocking you?”
Her response? “No, but I need to know who it belongs to because I’m doing Neighbor Watch for everyone!” 🫡 (News to us... we never signed up for the Premium Stalker Package).
When he asked why it mattered how long we were away & if the house was fine, she hit us with the fact she keeps logs of people coming and going for ‘security’. We have a zero crime rate locally as far as I can see. DH seems to think it might be illegal to record people arriving and leaving their homes / her house the first one into the estate so you have to drive by hers. We are next.

She then took her investigation to the local WhatsApp group, and let’s just say the neighbours haven’t received it well. It’s currently a digital riot of “How dare you film us?” and “This is actual stalking.” 🍿it has properly kicked off and I can see why. We haven’t replied or got involved.

We’re just sitting here on holiday, rucksacks and all, watching the drama unfold from a safe distance we are a 5 hour flight away. Does anyone else have a neighbour who thinks they’re the lead character in CSI: The new estate or is it just us? 😂

We don’t dislike them but I’m sure as hell not telling them my movements or where I am / be back. In an emergency yes but it’s not.

Nonsense. Those are legitimate punctuation forms.

An em dash can be used to continue an idea, for parenthesis, or to give an example—as here. An en dash (which I only really understood after reading about it) is used for ranges, for example 1925–6. You just hit the hyphen key the same time as the alt/option on a Mac for that.

It's difficult to see the difference sometimes. Hyphen -. Em dash—. En dash–. This is what you get when you type three in a row: hyphen, em, en --- ——— –––

There is always one.

LOL, yeah this. ^ Also, maybe put a trampoline on the front lawn, a swing and slide set, and a bouncy castle! (Maybe sit in the mismatched chairs smoking a spliff @Popcorntimewatchingdrama) 😆

We have a woman on our street who always loves to know what's going on and chatting to the neighbours, but she's nice, reasonable and doesn't overstep any boundaries.

We always say that the three best methods for passing on information quickly are:

1. Television
2. Telephone
3. Tell Mavis

Our neighbour looks through the fence and demands to know what hubby is doing

Hubby was chopping wood ,neighbour says " as long as you tell me what you're doing"

Unbelievable,

additional close boarded fence is going up very soon.

Some of these busybody nosey parkers must inhabit extremely sad, tiny little worlds - especially these days.

When you think how many millions of hours of top quality professionally-produced drama you can watch free online - both fiction and reality-based - but, instead of that, they occupy their every waking moment getting excited about which safe, legal, available space on the road Barbara at no 26 chooses to park her car; why Terry at no 35 had a delivery van outside his house on Thursday morning; whether Linda at no 19 has washed her net curtains or not; and whether Jim at no 31 has taken his emptied bin back in yet!

I did that the time I had a run-in with the woman who kept nicking our bins and dumping her rubbish in our back garden. (The house was empty and I was trying to sell it. Her interference wasn't helping.

With hindsight, I could have done a neighbourhood FB "Has anyone lost a parcel?" post.

Instead, I told our Mavis all about the most recent rubbish and the problem stopped completely.

The NDN at the old house had stuffed a cardboard delivery box with all her junk mail and whatnot. Unfortunately for her she'd left he label with her name and address, so I just placed it on her doorstep and knocked. Of course, she didn't answer.

She'd previously tried DARVO when I'd confronted her about taking the paper bin. There was no mistake—it had our door number on it and she'd locked it in her back garden, right next to her own bin.

This time round, the cardboard box had a return label which stated that it was from a Birmingham Company called Exotic Nights. All I had to do was tell Mavis, and I never had any interaction with the rubbish dumper again.

Yes we have one. She has made our lives hell with harassment the last 2 years. She constantly watches everything we and others do, has cameras facing our garden and also reports us and others for the most mundane ridiculous things, the most recent was my fairy solar lights in my garden causing a distraction to drivers 😆 the pcso who came out said never in her life has she had to talk to someone about such a ridiculous complaint and we had a good laugh about it. And told me to put more out there. They all know what shes like. But its been awful, her behaviour has been so malicious and toxic (loads more has gone on from her )it's affected my mental health with anxiety ive managed to feel better with lots of support and we just ignore any provocation.

Not me but dsis, neighbour told dbil he needs to power wash outside his house he was told dbil has a full time job and small kids and might do it when he had time . He then approached dsis same day bad timing we had just heard parent was diagnosed with cancer she ate him and burst into tears. He hasn't talked to them since. He also mowed another neighbours lawn because he thought it was too long .

This is the problem: it's fine for people to choose to live in such a tiny little world for themselves; but when they assume that such trivial things are high on everybody else's priority lists as well, and then judge them for having much more actually important things going on in their lives and calls on their far more limited time.

They're like toddlers who have never grown up - when you have dozens of essential chores and errands that you need to do urgently, but as far as the little child is concerned, you aren't playing Barbies (for the 20th time that day) and that's the only thing that they think needs to be done, hence they need to 'inform' you of that.

they are everywhere and usually some mild MH issues are involved ...best to ignore, smile and nod

Absolutely can't and shouldn't have cameras pointing at your property in that way. As for the fairy lights.......words fail me 🙈

Sounds great to me!

Aww, I don't mind that!

We call ours the binfluencer (he's nice, helpful and harmless)

We have another neighbour who is obsessed with parking on the road. Her house is the only one that doesn't have an allocated space, so if the road fills up she has to park elsewhere so she gets super militant if 'people she doesn't know' park in the street.

She is also not shy in asking builders or workmen what you are having done and how much it costs. She is also an avid WA user and shared an advertisement I had done to spareroom.com to the local WA group to ask if it was 'illegal subletting' even if I was a homeowner, and if anyone wanted to join her in writing to me about it. She did several posts banging on about slumlords and HMOs (of which I am neither)

She left us alone after her and the guy I let my spare room to got into a relationship, and then he publicly embarrassed her when they very noisily split up in the street for everyone to see. For some reason, she seems to blame me for this unforgivable humiliation.

I think it sounds great OP. For a laugh and for piss taking purposes.

I am an avid user of em-dashes, use double quotation marks, ,mainly because it is grammatically correct to do so.

My exh and I had separated when my next door neighbour saw me outside in my garden with my new DP. When she next saw DD visit me she said 'Does your Dad wear an earring?' thinking that DD didn't know about DP! Nosy old bat moved soon afterwards!

Back in the day when we lived in our first house we had Fred and Marge from No. 26. They used to stand in their front garden with their heads on a permanent back and forth swivel, constantly checking out what was going on because they didn't want to miss anything. They were actually a very nice couple, but so nosy.

There is a couple of us that can be a bit nosey I guess 😬 between us we tend to see and know most things. Also definitely don’t see some things 😏. You might catch us having a gossip sat on our walls out the front.

We litter pick, share cctv footage. Rolled our own hoses out when little shites set fire the field behind. Cut the verges to the extent the council don’t even bother to come out to do them anymore in our stretch 😅

We also left our old house in what the neighbours would consider a flit. Because we were done done with that street. Even the neighbours I had on social media had no idea and still have no idea where we are now.

We have a local councillor who is the local busybody. We call him the Minister without Portfolio. He reports everything and everyone to the council and takes photos of himself pointing at stuff. His garden overlooked mine. So I planted a really big tree to block him out

if the road fills up she has to park elsewhere so she gets super militant if 'people she doesn't know' park in the street.

Is she one of those MNers who will start a thread about 'an abandoned car' and ask if she should report it to the council - because she doesn't recognise it and it's already been there all weekend?!

Might be glad of a nosey neighbour one day!

You could have kept scrolling . Responding isn't mandatory🙄