This situation is genuinely upsetting me quite a lot and I’m just hoping for some advice on how to let this wash over me. (Not really looking for advice on what I can actively do about it as I’ve been there and done that and absolutely nothing changes).
One of our next door neighbours is awful. We are all in detached houses but bizarrely the gardens are fairly narrow and so we are quite close together. They have two dogs and during the spring and summer months they let them in the garden for hours at a time to bark and bark and bark. It’s not even like the dogs are trying to get back in the house, because the people that live there are out in the garden with them at the same time, you can hear them winding the dogs up which of course makes them even worse. They have I think 3 or 4 kids who scream and scream when in the garden. I have no issue with listening to kids play and have fun but this screaming goes through you. It can be for most of the day when the weather is hot and sunny.
They are the kind of people who only have to have the slightest sniff of sun to be out in the garden chatting to each other, or on their phones. That in itself is of course not a problem but the volume they talk at is absolutely ridiculous, often it is so loud it sounds as if they are arguing with each other but “much” of the time it is just the way they talk, and the disgusting language it’s quite embarrassing to listen to sometimes. (And yes it is frequently in front of the kids as I’ve heard them out there at the same time). Well - I say “much” of the time they are not arguing - However I would say a couple of times a month they have a blazing row in the back garden for all to hear.
The vast majority of these problems calm down in the winter months when they are indoors. My mental health has deteriorated quite badly during the 7 years we’ve lived here, directly related to living next door to these people. It is as if as soon as the spring weather arrives it gets really bad and then I find myself counting down the days until autumn and winter because I know it’s going to calm down again.
They are most certainly not approachable types however the year before last I did finally find the courage inside me to approach them over the fence, I was literally shaking as I was talking to her, it had taken me a long time to pluck the courage up to do this. At that particular time the main issue was the dog barking driving us absolutely insane. DH and I work all kinds of weird and wonderful shift patterns and I tried to explain this to her and how it was disrupting us (One evening last July I very embarrassingly fell asleep at my desk at work!). I didn’t expect her to take me seriously and she kind of shrugged her shoulders and said “well we have a very up-and-down relationship and family life is crazy isn’t it” then she walked off. Something along those lines anyway. I didn’t say anything to her about the screaming from the kids because I didn’t know whether I was overreacting or not, but as it happened, the summer before last I had some friends to stay and they both commented on how noisy the kids were - One of the friends is a primary teacher and she said she had never heard anything like it before. So I guess it clarified for me that I am not overreacting lol.
DH and I are going to be putting the house on the market next year but of course with the virus and Brexit nobody knows when this will be or how long it will take to sell.
What I am really wanting are some techniques to be able to block all of this out. Literally all I want is to not be so miserable about it but I don’t know how!
I have spoken to our local environmental health department just for some advice and they told me to try and speak to the neighbours in a friendly manner first which I have done, The next step would be a formal complaint but I do not want to go down that road especially with selling the house because I would have to declare it and I can tell that our neighbours are the sort of people it would not be difficult to fall out with and I absolutely do not want to do that at all. So I am not going to be making a formal complaint.
My mental health in the spring and summer months has got to the stage where the GP has prescribed medication which I have yet to take, but before I go down that road I would like to know if there are any other coping techniques people can recommend until we move? I think that the very fact I am posting this over Christmas and already dreading the spring is a reflection of how much it affects my life.