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.

@WearyAuldWumman the tilde ~ is best of them all cause it's pretty and curly!

Our next door neighbours are like this. It drives me absolutely insane.
The wife insists on buying everyone on the street cards and gifts for their birthday. Lovely you say. Nope- woe betide anyone who doesn’t reciprocate.
The husband is the bin guy. God bless him. But if you don’t give his wife a bday gift, you can forget your bins being brought out or in.
Both will mention if you’ve been away. They’ll also say things like, “we thought you were unwell as you usually go out at 6.30 on Fridays”

When we told them we were expecting, the wife said. I thought so, I saw you both heading off last week with a NHS letter in your hands. Wtf!!!

i am equally amused and exasperated at them.

deep down (like 10 ft down) I think they mean well but fuck me, they’re nosey as sin!

To add:
An em dash is so called because it's the length of the letter m, an n dash is the length of the letter n

I don't know why a hyphen is called a hyphen

I don't think I could cope with some of the examples on here. It would be a struggle to just smile and say nothing.

Gawd the drama

We have nothing like this at all

I love a good nosey neighbour, I’m probably one myself. But filming and logging comings and goings is insane! Super creepy.

All these accusations that OP used - or is that should have used - chatgpt / AI to write her (perfectly intelligible) post! But at least she hasn't been accused of being an actual robot, as I have.

At work, I always answered the phone with a standard greeting: "good morning, [company name], [my name] speaking. How can I help you?" Several callers replied suspiciously "Are you an AI?" Now, I have a Teesside accent - think Steph McGovern when she does HIGNFY - so I don't know how they'd jump to that conclusion. I just told them "yes, but it's a cheap version".

We have one who unfortunately lives directly across the road from me 🙄 she used to make comments about how late my teenagers had their tv on at night. She also noticed when we decorated one of their bedrooms (their rooms are at the front)

someone has a skip delivered, she’s right out asking what it’s for.

an ambulance arrives, she’s right out asking what’s going on

something happens in the street, it’s her job to tell everyone

during Covid she could tell you every single person that had come and gone in a day. You need to drive past our houses to get out of the street and she must have been glued to her front window watching peoples cars

she told me during Covid that my dad shouldn’t be coming to mine to take my dog for walks. He wasn’t even coming in the house. He was coming to the door, I would open it and let the dog go out to him. Ironically she came to my door to tell me this 😂😂 I did tell her to butt out at that point, that waking my dog was the only thing keeping my dad sane!

last winter she was monitoring the grit bin (which unfortunately sits on a patch of grass next to her house) to make sure people weren’t using too much. It’s all going on the same roads! What the fuck does it matter if Gerry at no9 took 2 shovels full???

she doesn’t like it when people ask her things tho. Her husband was taken away in an ambulance a few months ago. Her next door neighbour asked her a few days later if he was ok and was told it was none of her business 😂😂😂😂

she genuinely seems to think she has a right to know everything that goes on in everyone elses houses.

When a guy was beaten up in the middle of the street, in the middle of the day, neither our neighbour who monitors parking and car arrivals, nor the neighbour who complains when you decorate your own house saw anything when the police came 🤨

Oh are those grit bins there for residents to use??

She will go out while the person is in the middle of parallel parking, knock on the window and tell them that they need to not finish parking up as it's 'residents' parking only'

She's got it timed to perfection so the arse of the car is half in and the driver has just put full lock on and is looking to the left side mirror. They then get very startled by the knock on the driver's side window because they are not looking that way. The driver is then flustered, and due to the sudden change in what they were doing to suddenly what they are being told to do seems to make them want to comply, saying they 'didn't see the signs' (there are no signs) and they pull out and drive off because it's an easy position to pull away from.

Works 99% of the time (if they have a passenger, is when it doesn't tend to work)

And is it officially residents only parking, or is that a lie that she tells them because she thinks thaf she owns the road and makes the rules?

Oh, it is a barefaced lie - but it seems that people are flustered and halfway through a parking manoeuvre, so they take the easy option open to them to pull out rather than park up (while being watched by an angry resident) to then argue about it.

As I said, she is the only house that doesn't have allocated parking. So I think that in her mind, she feels that if she 'allows' randoms to park, then when she needs to park, there will be no spaces.

Had one at my old place. Saw every single thing that happened in the eight years I was there, five doors down.

Except who hit my fucking car across from his.

It's amazing how many people genuinely believe they own the public road - or have exclusive rights to part of it just because they happen to live nearby. I mean, we're attached to our NDN's house, so you can't get much more 'nearby' than that... but we don't somehow think that we own her house!

How does anybody even begin to think that, if they personally want something, that magically makes it the law for everybody?

I'm usually in the mindset of live and let live; but with somebody like this, I think they need somebody to just tell/show it to them straight. They act (again) like they're little children who have never been told No and "I want doesn't get". If somebody challenged them and told them to call the police/council/whoever now to come out and rule on who is correct, they'd be just as upset as they merrily make everybody else feel in dictating their will for everybody else.

Yes. The road out of our street is a hill. When it snows/is really icy cars can’t get up the hill. So there’s a grit bin at bottom and one in the middle (the one that the neighbour monitors) for people to spread onto the road. It can get really bad when it snows and everyone mucks in to grit the hill so we can get out.

not sure if the nosy neighbour would prefer everyone was stuck, but she did not like people taking the grit

Hmmm, interesting. So he sees everything that OTHER people do but didn't see who hit your car? I certainly know where my initial suspicions would lie as to who did it.

I have lived in my current house for near on 25 years. Several of the neighbours even longer. Not a single assed one of them has my phone number. There is no WA group. A polite hello in the passing is all that happens, occasionally a bit more of a chat, usually about mundane stuff.

Your situation is fucking batshit.

No WhatsApp group on our (very long) street thank god.Everyone just cracks on with their lives.

We have one. He's pretty much the only person who still rings our landline, and it's usually to let us know who the ambulance was for last night, or what he has managed to find out about the new neighbours which usually turns out to be incorrect. I didn't realise there was one on every street.

We don't encourage the gossip, and he was mildly inconvenienced when we had an ambulance for my husband on Christmas eve and he only found out about it two weeks later, but when he came to the door to ask about it I only gave him a vague "Oh, we're okay now thanks" answer. He truly believes he's doing things in the spirit of neighbourly duty.

I don't know the law on it. I always thought they were for council use only, but just stored in convenient places. Some are locked, but others aren't. I suppose there's no harm if residents do it themselves - as the council are probably as keen to come and do it as they are to mend potholes; but they probably take a dim official view if people use it all for their own drives rather than for the public roads.

It's a shame that it can't be somehow engineered so that ALL of these people could live in streets together, and leave the rest of the streets for normal people who actually have lives, respect that others do too, and don't get excited about mundane non-events.

Surely they'd love nothing more, as there would be permanent drama with all of the endless multilateral gossiping and everybody arguing with everybody else about the most ridiculous trivia and the pettiest of squabbles. They could be like the monkeys at the zoo who just spend their days hurling their own poo at each other.

Grit bins are for residents to use on public roads. Its a way for councils to save money having contractors out spreading it.

Only around my way they saved money by not filling up the grit bins then removing them entirely. I'd be delighted if I lived somewhere that still had serviced grit bins!

This is what I thought when I read this. Haven’t seen a grit bin for years!

I had no clue! Have been diligently leaving the one at the end of my close alone through some very slippy winters lol thanks!