To be shocked at neighbour??

[DomesticDisgrace]

I was having a very rare chat with my downstairs neighbour, I'm in a duplex and she's in a flat underneath with her front door under the stairs to my place. Two very separate buildings really and you can hear absolutely nothing from one to the other.
We were talking about ovens and I was saying I'm a pretty useless cook but really been trying this year, something was said about what shelf is best and she said "because heat rises", at this stage DD was getting impatient and I just made a stupid joke about how that'll come in handy for me next winter (given that she lives underneath), not even true because I had my heating on loads this winter and I only said it out of silliness.

Well I've just gotten a text from her saying "Domestic, I've been thinking after our discussion earlier and I'm feeling a little hard done by if I'm honest. Perhaps we could have a chat later on and come up with the fairest way of dealing with the issue regarding heating"

What the actual fuck, I don't know what to say back but I really can't afford to pay her for having her heat on just because heat rises??

Sometimes people who come across as timid and shy are the ones who are most vitriolic in writing. They can't say what they want to say in person then they overcompensate with extreme hostility from a safe distance.

Oh please use NoodelOoodle's reply...brilliant!

Angela that's really interesting actually, I wish you could all see how she is in person. Comes across so shy, constantly fiddling with her hair and laughing nervously. Seems really apologetic in general and I've never seen her bring a friend home, she lives alone.

I mean absolutely no disrespect to anybody with a mental illness, there's no excuse for being nasty but I do think there may be something amiss. She seems very intelligent and she works in a role providing information so she would have known that payment is long gone. Creepy.

The heat would rise whether there was anyone above her or not! Same as yours and everyone else's. Stupid cow.

Woah, she stepped it up a little didn't she? I do love noodles response.

Only seeing Noodles response now. So tempting!!

I think it's time to post an ad on punternet with her number.

Comes across so shy, constantly fiddling with her hair and laughing nervously. Seems really apologetic in general and I've never seen her bring a friend home, she lives alone.

Combine that with the texts & you appear to have a Grade 1 Bunny Boiler!!

You should have replied:

Oh that's so kind of you but I wouldn't be happy accepting money from you for saving you money on your heating bill, compared to having no one above like me.

Now you need to reply: Hahaha, that's made my day.

She'll be livid not to have annoyed you.

Wow op, that's incredible! I'd leave it! Things could get nasty with aa weirdo like that! Bet she has the heating on fully in the summer now as some kinda fucked up revenge!

As someone who has experienced savage mental health problems, I can honestly say that I have no compunction at all in calling this woman completely bonkers. That's just using casual English, not something to get offended over. Her behaviour is most certainly very weird.

I would deliberately misunderstand and reply "oh I'm so sorry, I didn't realise you were a deserted wife...that explains your difficulty with your gas bill. I have no direct experience, but maybe there's a local support group?"

Yes, as a fellow MH survivor I concur your neighbour is a grade a fruit of the loon.

or tell her you'll be billing her for the air conditioning in the summer < I quite like pizzas.suggestion! . Text back politely to get lost.

I'm really trying hard to imagine what would lead someone to think that up and down the country people who live in flats on lower floors have their energy bills subsidised by those living above. I mean seriously, has anyone EVER heard of that being done?? I can understand stupid, or crazy, but how on earth she actually thought it through and then made such an approach simply defies rational explanation. It's mind-boggling.

Don't even get me started on the 'Good luck with the Job Hunt' comment. Patronising much.

Wouldn't the upstairs flats/duplos be a sort of insulation for those below?

Neighbour issues are horrid though. We had them when I was pregnant. It was very stressful.

I killed him in the end.

YANBU OP, she sounds crackers!

My neighbours are the most precious upstarts you'd ever have the misfortune of meeting - complain over the most tedious of things. Your neighbour makes my lot sound positively delightful OP. I'm clearly missing a trick here. As someone who used to live in a ground floor flat I never bothered to ask the upstairs neighbour to sling us a few quid for benefiting from our heat rising .

I'm having a total sense of humour bypass reading this thread. The woman is so obviously quite severely mentally ill. She sounds exactly like a woman I used to work with who had borderline personality disorder. Very literal and manipulative and mean spirited and lonely. Also very intelligent and an information gatherer, utterly bemused but intrigued by how NT people cope with every day life.

I'm sorry she's been mean to OP but I feel really sorry for her. She sounds very isolated because of her MH problems having such unpleasant social side effects. Yes, steer clear because she's nuts but all these posts about how to goad her and get your own back just seem ugly coming from people who aren't wrestling with how to be normal.

Sorry if that's really holier than thou, just I kept expecting someone else to come on here and say it but no one did.

I think you've handled the whole thing with grace op and are right not to respond but definitely agree with others that you should change your number.

Pray tell more, Misspixie.

I keep thinking OP's neighbour obviously has ASD. Does no one else think that way?

I'm really trying hard to imagine what would lead someone to think that up and down the country people who live in flats on lower floors have their energy bills subsidised by those living above. I mean seriously, has anyone EVER heard of that being done??

UncleT I lived in a basement flat. Someone who lived on the ground floor was arguing that I should not only be responsible for correcting all damp problems - there wasn't a damp problem btw - but that other flat-owners should be able to sue me for possible damage to their flats.

She wanted the outside of the house to be renovated in an angel cake fashion - one horizontal slice at a time with people being responsible for the renovations of their own floors. However, she still thought that I should contribute to the service charges of the whole house even though mine was a completely self-contained flat and I had no reason to use the internals of the main house. Work that one out.

On her logic, I shouldn't have contributed to repairing the roof either, but she thought I should. I thought I should too, because we lived in a shared building, but I was only prepared to do that if the other leaseholders were prepared to help me if the Thames flooded.

Mind you, she didn't want to fix the roof either, because she didn't like the people who lived in the top flat and it wasn't going to rain on her head.

People are bonkers. She was grasping and crooked. She went>