To think I live in a fucking parallel universe?

[hungryhippo90]

I moved to a new build estate. I’ve never seen ANYTHING like it.

There’s a neighbourhood watch who put letters out on people’s cars if they’re parked in the estate. In fact a few cars got covered in tomato ketchup for being left here... not even specifically outside peoples houses. Some of the neighbours go out and moan at people parked anywhere near their house.

You get letters through the door if your bins aren’t in the back garden by 3pm the day they’re emptied (I don’t know what happens when you both work till 5pm!) there are a lot of moaning posts if it’s windy and bin day. One of the residents goes out and picks up litter, which is normal I guess but I’ve never seen it before.

There’s lots of moaning that there will be council accommodation on the estate and shock horror, the house prices!!

They currently have 3 different lawsuits ongoing with the housebuilder, the maintenance company who deals with the estates grass etc and I don’t even know who else.

One of the home owners asked the other day if the estate had security because they saw someone in a security outfit (there’s still buildingwork ongoing- there is security on that site nothing to do with the residents and FWIW it’s clear. This is answered by loads of ....maybe answers, and I start to think I don’t even live in this world. It’s clear we don’t have security! Who on earth would be paying for it? .....and one person pipes up with, ask to see their ID and their credentials (he wasn’t joking!)

Oh and there are pictures on the Facebook group - which you have to send your address to join by the way!) of every person they’ve ever seen walking through the estate.

Today someone posts a picture, someone posts a picture of two people, and one of them is out patrolling the estate for those not belonging here.

Please, please tell me I just live in a weird place and everywhere is not like this.

I find it beyond odc, a few of the other residents think it is beyond hilarious, and I used to laugh but it’s starting to bewilder me how grown ups who own houses, honestly believe our bog standard estate have security provided in the evenings.

This sounds like the road my parents live on. It used to be ok but some of the newer residents have a completely hysterical overreaction to anything and everything.

Parents were amused for a little while but now do their best to ignore.

Why on earth would anyone chose to display their bins,and when they have the space around the house?

Thought experiment: you live in a back to back in armley, with no front garden, obviously no back one and a front door that goes directly into the street.

Where does the bin go?

Backenette
In a neat row down the snicket at the end of course

The uproar on our street when the council introduced Wheelie bins

There was a petition and someone made a wanted poster of the councillor responsible for the introduction and made wares posters and went door to door asked everyone to put them in their windows and on the bins.

I have no interest in that sort of community spirit.

I'll just add this to the list of 'ways I didn't know I was failing until I browsed Mumsnet' like having a loo brush. I keep my bins in front of my house every day and so do my neighbours. It saves having to be arsed remembering to put them out! People that care about shit like this really need to give their heads a wobble. Also if some absolute muppet dared to knock on my door and tell me to take down my own ironing board in my own damn home or put my bins away at a specific time or put ketchup on my visitor's car, I would laugh in their face and tell them very clearly to fuck off (/report them to the police for the ketchup one).

I live in a village and the Facebook regularly has updates such as " just seen someone dressed all in black , be careful" and the classic " seen people that don't look like they'd live here " Also teenagers in cars drives them crazy. I love a read when I'm looking for some light entertainment!

I had a neighbour informing me very earnestly she could see our laundry line . She really sounded like she is sharing a great secret with me and was mightily put out when she realised this would be a regular occurrence.

This is how you smugly display a bin

living what on Earth is supposed to be going on there??

I looked at a house to buy on a new build estate last weekend, and this is how I imagined it would be.

Sorry OP, hope the enthusiasm fizzles out to normal levels.

...

In my head the OPs estate is like the British version of wisteria lane and there's going to be some kind of dark comedy secret to be unravelled by her and the other "rebels" against the neighbourhood watch.

Thorny there are actually several houses up for sale in the estate. It could have something to do with it!

Doublemint- I wish!

Backenette I have no idea!

My village Facebook page is hilarious - it is like Hot Fuzz. Post after post after post about dogshit (often with photos, vom) - oddly no real wheelie bin angst, but much garment rending over parking. And of course, now a group have got together to try and win the village in bloom competitions and it is all going a bit Wickerman.

I am always amazed by people who can agonise over such minutiae. Wheelie bin covers? First sign of madness, if you ask me,

I thought that wooden slatted bin cover thing was a giant pile of pallets outside the front of the house. I proper laughed when sask explained it was supposed to be an improvement. I was off down the ‘that’s bloody weird, why would you keep a stack of pallets out front. Does it flood all the time? That can’t be good for house prices...’
But mostly I am lol at the username irony - the Saskatchewan stereotype is definitely not hyacinth bucket you are messing with my mind man!

Wow.

We live at the very top of the hill a couple of miles away from the edge of the country and the Wild Atlantic, and most bin days my empty bin rampages around the cul de sac in a completely feral fashion until I get home and take it in hand. Most recycling days, the recycling boxes join it.

My washing line is actually on the back fence, and the wind regularly grabs the whole line, with all its washing, and flips it over the fence (we live at the end of a terrace) so that my underwear is proudly displayed to the World at Large. I don't mind terribly, because that side of the fence is in the sun, so it dries faster.

Thankfully, even though it's a new build estate (kind of), my neighbours aren't raging nutjobs, though. Although reading this thread, I kind of wish they were, because it would be so much fun devising creative ways to torment them .

Why is she squatting by a wheelie bin?
Won’t she ladder her body stocking on the flagstones??

Intriguing...

Our street has set up a new residents association and we have an actual fucking mascot

Scary shit here. The debauchery is crazy.
The neighbours even more so!

What on earth makes people think that they have the right to dictate how people live?

In fairness, nearly everyone thinks this, it's just the standards they want to enforce that vary.

For example, the idea that you should be quiet between 11pm and 7am (written into flat leases) is dictating how other people live.

Looking after your street/area is good, but telling people what colour paint they have to use for the front door is not on.

They might have a vigilante group patrolling at night time paid for by residents who want the security. It's more common in troubled neighbourhoods but also known in areas where people want to keep up appearances.
It's not something I'd want anything to do with.

I wouldn't be chipping in & I certainly won't be stopped any "vigilante group", while going about my own business.

do you live here?

I live on a former council/council estate, we have a Facebook group but it's nothing like yours😅just people occasionally selling things, offers in our local coop and reminders to pick up dog poo

'The rod up that man's butt must have a rod up its butt' = your neighbours.

We have alleys here (Victorian era suburb close to big American city). Garages open onto the alleys. The bins stay out in the alleys. Garbage and recycling trucks make their way up and down every single one weekly, through rain, snow, ice and blizzards. Anyone can dump anything in the bins as they walk past. When I come home on bin day (my parking spot is in the alley) I often find the six bins to the apartments where I live all akimbo, so I maneuver them into position.

People also leave out furniture and other items items they want to get rid of and they are almost always gone within a few days - I found my lovely gate leg kitchen table in an alley. On main streets people leave stuff out at the kerb. Items with metal components are salvaged by a pair of scrap metal merchants who do their rounds weekly. There is currently a nice looking tv cabinet sitting outside my neighbour's garage, and a kitchen chair further up. Once the snow clears off and the weather starts to warm up stuff will start appearing in alleys all over town.

A few very hoity toity suburbs organise 'Spring Cleanup' weeks annually where residents leave out the fruits of spring cleaning that others might be interested in picking up. People leave out all sorts of crazy crap from dolls houses to sailboats to claw foot bathtubs.. The events draw hundreds. Then the garbage trucks move in and take what's left.

You need some garden gnomes. Lots of them, in the front garden.

You can buy rude ones too, like these.

www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_nkw=rude+garden+gnomes