Firstly NC as outing, secondly I realise that I may have initially been in the wrong, but I wonder if this was a reasonable reaction from neighbours.
Last week by DH bought an incinerator for the garden. He used it for first time on Thursday afternoon . We had never used an incinerator before and did not know how much smoke would be produced so we checked that neighbours on either side were out and that they had no washing on lines or pets outside etc. It was quite a still day with little breeze. We were not burning garden waste, but some old documents with personal information on them. After a few minutes the neighbour from the house backing onto ours came knocking at door ranting and raving telling us to move incinerator immediately as it was spoiling his enjoyment of his garden. I apologised profusely and went to tell DH. Unfortunately he could not move it as it was too hot(obviously) but put the lid on to lessen smoke, and stopped burning move papers. We then heard the neighbour tell his daughter that I had apologised and she then said she was going to call the council. My DH was alarmed at this, but I reasoned that she could hardly call the council as we had immediately done our best to stop further smoke. Fast forward to today when I get home to see a letter from the council to say that they had a complaint about smoke causing a nuisance. So while I admit that we may have been inconsiderate, was this the best cause of action from my neighbour? I could understand if we had ignored their request and carried on burning stuff, or if we had done this on several occasions, but not after a ' first offence'. I await the rationalMN responses.