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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

Weird neighbours

77 replies

PrettyLittIeThing · 06/04/2018 17:05

Please tell me other people have neighbours like this and it's not just me! So whenever I am in my garden my neighbours will spy out the window at me. They did it last summer and now that the weather is getting better it looks like they are back to it. (Haven't been using the garden much until now.) Last year they use to spy out when my kids were in their paddling pool. Now I am tidying up the garden ready for the nice weather they are looking out directly down at us again. Even if I look up they just stay there staring. It's the parents and the kids that do it. Today the daughter was hanging out of the window looking down at us and just singing?! It made me uncomfortable to the point I went back inside. Aibu to find this annoying. Sometimes I think it's because I live in a gff (well it's a mainsonette) as surely in a house you wouldn't look into your other neighbours garden whereas they are above us. Before anyone days maybe they are just looking outside at the view. No they are definitely not as they are looking directly down and there is no view anywy just trees. Aibu to find this annoying? Just to add me and these neighbours don't talk at all other than collecting parcels from each other (been about 4 times in two years so not often.) but that's the only interaction we have had.

OP posts:

UrsulaPandress · 06/04/2018 17:42

Or windows.

Beeziekn33ze · 06/04/2018 17:43

Isn't it normal to say hello to new neighbours?

CanIBuffalo · 06/04/2018 17:43

I like the parasol idea better though. Get a massive one.

CanIBuffalo · 06/04/2018 17:45

Of course people are allowed to use their windows but OP is also allowed to try to create a little privacy for herself too if she feels uncomfortable. Then it's a win-win

Juells · 06/04/2018 17:46

Isn't it normal to say hello to new neighbours?

But not compulsory. I'd find it very intrusive if someone was hanging out a window watching me in my garden. Bad enough that my neighbour watches out his window, but at least it's at the front when I'm just walking dogs or going to the shop. I'd be shouting rude things at him if he hung out the window watching when I was in the garden. It's creepy as fuck.

TheFirstMrsOsmond · 06/04/2018 17:47

Juells They might have had the mistaken impression on that first occasion that the child was unsupervised and are now keeping an eye out, believing wrongly that the OP is a "negligent" parent - which would explain why he shouted "Are you OK?" The quickest way to clear the matter up would be to make it clear the child was being watched all the time

AlessandroVasectomi · 06/04/2018 17:48

We suffer from a slight variation of this. We live in detached houses, so not on top of one another like the OP. Our irritant is that whenever we see our neighbour she replays our life to us. “I see you had a delivery on Tuesday”. “We saw your car was taken away on a low loader last week”. “We saw you dug up that shrub in the front garden at the weekend”.

It is obvious that she watches our every move and it has started to get to us. They have a bedroom that gives her a grandstand view of our patio and we’ve had to re-arrange the layout so that we can eat, relax, sunbathe or whatever in relative privacy. Even then, we still feel that we are constantly being watched. We have lived in this house for 30 years and they had been next door for 12 years before we moved in. For a good part of those 30 years we were raising 4 children and were too busy to notice what the neighbours were up to, but since we’ve had no children at home the surveillance has become apparent.

An extreme example of how nothing gets missed: a few years ago we were re-mortgaging and the valuer just took a few photos of the outside of our house rather than carry out a traditional mortgage valuation. A few days later, NDN rings our doorbell and her first words were “ARE YOU MOVING?” Not “Hi Alessandro, how are you? I just popped round to ask....blah blah blah”. I wished afterwards that I’d told her some made up story about somebody making us an unbelievable offer to sell which we just couldn’t turn down. Our houses are very sought after locally due to the catchment area for schools so it would have been plausible.

With the warmer weather approaching we are bracing ourselves for another summer of being watched....😕

Greenglassteacup · 06/04/2018 17:50

We have this too. They watch us through the trellis, it’s so odd. I’ll be playing in the garden with my daughter or doing some gardening & then I see a pair of eyes in the trellis. Freaks.

BoomBoomsCousin · 06/04/2018 17:52

They do sound a bit weird. Could they want to chat? 2 years is a long time to keep that up for though if they haven't got around to engaging you in conversation yet.

You could escalate things - get some binoculars and use them to stare right back at them. Or point your camera phone at them and take a photo everytime you spot them. But who knows where that would lead...

PaleBlue · 06/04/2018 17:57

Yes, this happened to me. I moved into a four in a block type of flat. I am on the ground floor and man in one of the upper flats would be at his open window watching me and dc in the garden. He would sit there for hours watching us. I just ignored him and bought a couple of parasols to sit under. I put one over the paddling pool. He would also watch me when I was in my front garden. I think he had nothing else to do.

I was glad when he moved. I don't have that Martindale feeling of being watched all the time.

SabineUndine · 06/04/2018 17:58

Have they got a garden? If not she might just be wishing she were out there too.

halfwitpicker · 06/04/2018 17:58

Sounds weird.

I'd do as a PP said and engage them in conversation.

Yoo hoo, Mrs Pepping Tom, how the devil are you on this Fine May morning? Glorious isn't it?

PaleBlue · 06/04/2018 17:58

Oops sorry for the typo no idea what Martindale means!!

BoomBoomsCousin · 06/04/2018 18:00

Alessandro I think I would be unable to resist gaslighting your neighbour if I were in your position - "Shrub? We've never had a shrub in the front garden?" "Delivery on Tuesday? Are you sure you're alright? We were away Sunday - Wednesday." Or possibly just outrageously untrue - "Car taken away? Yes, recall. Apparently, it was hours away from self-igniting. I think I'm going to commute by balloon from now on."

LifeofClimb · 06/04/2018 18:00

This reminds me of school days I remember a girl I was at school with, who hated me looking even in her general direction. If I got partnered with her, I had to stare at the wall while talking to her about our work - she demanded no eye contact or went proper mental... she was a complete nutcase... the only reason I entertained her batshit ways was so we didn't both get chucked out of the room for disruption.

Original poster

PrettyLittIeThing · 06/04/2018 18:04

I don't think they are "watching out for me" as they "think I'm negligent" a 4 year old is perfectly fine playing in a garden on his own (no paddling pool on this occasion) for 5 minutes whilst I wash some dishes. The garden is secure with no hazards. Even then I wouldn't feel the need to explain anything to my neighbours. The time that happened I had even seen them at all that was the first I knew of them livig about (it had been empty for a while) so it shocked me abit so I just called my son in.

OP posts:

Original poster

PrettyLittIeThing · 06/04/2018 18:04

Just to point out he is 6 now but was 4 at the time.

OP posts:

Original poster

PrettyLittIeThing · 06/04/2018 18:07

Parasols and gazebos are the way forward I think. And no they don't have a garden.

OP posts:

MinnieMinchkin · 06/04/2018 18:17

I had a neighbour who stood on a bench in his garden to watch us whenever we went out into ours. He would try to start up inane conversations with us, so was totally blatant. No privacy and no peace. We found he had previously been spoken to by the police for standing in the street watching another neighbour through her living room window. Not sure what the rest of his family thought...

RestingBitchFaced · 06/04/2018 18:17

Bet they are waiting to be invited to your garden. Have you tried saying anything to them?

Original poster

PrettyLittIeThing · 06/04/2018 18:19

Well they will be waiting forever as that isn't going to happen.

OP posts:

YoThePussy · 06/04/2018 18:21

It is coming up to the time for sowing seeds OP. Won’t your upstairs neighbours get a lovely surprise when the seeds you have planted spelling out ‘Stop spying on me’ come up and start flowering.

Yep parasols are the way forward.

AlessandroVasectomi · 06/04/2018 18:48

BoomBoom - she was trying to gaslight me yesterday! I was washing my car with a jet washer when she appeared on my drive and said that my jetwasher was making her lights flicker. When I pointed out that it was unlikely if not impossible when our houses have separate electricity supplies and if my jet washer was going to affect anybody’s electrics, it would be mine! She slunk away and nothing more was said. I wish I’d had the presence of mind to ask how many lights she had on at 3 pm on a bright and sunny afternoon.

I washed my wife’s car today, but nothing was said about the jet washer. DW thinks the neighbours must have reached the age when they start imagining all sorts of batshit things as they have never been any trouble (apart from surreptitious surveillance) in all the time we’ve lived here.

CannaeBeErsed · 06/04/2018 18:51

Eek! Definitely parasols and a gazebo. We all look out of our windows from time to time and there's no laws against it but standing there, watching, staring at someone going about their business is creepy as hell. I would be very tempted to just shout up, "Everything okay? Can I help you?" every time they do it and just stand there, staring back.
In fact, up the game a bit. Wait until there's a decent scary thunderstorm at night, pop on a mac or cloak and just stand there.... In the shadows.... Staring up at them horror movie killer style.

BoomBoomsCousin · 06/04/2018 18:52

Alessandro . That's a bit difficult. Playing with someone who's possibly beginning to have some cognitive difficulties is not kind, but it doesn't make them any easier to cope with!

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