Neighbour knocked on our door and had a go...

[Daisycat76]

Not sure what to think of this.... DP and I moved into a new neighbourhood a few weeks ago. It's a fairly affluent area, detached houses etc. Anyway we had visitors over the weekend staying for 2 days, and DP wanted to move our car so the visitors could park on the drive. He parked the car on the street opposite. Wasn't blocking anyone's drive, or parked in an illegal or obstructive way. He parked it there Friday lunch time.

Saturday evening neighbour we've never met came knocking on the door, and without introducing himself just started having a go at us for parking our car there. He didn't ask us to move it or explain why it bothered him - just immediately started ranting that we're "disrespecting our neighbours" and "we don't give a s*". We said we haven't done anything wrong, it's legal to park on any road as long as it's not blocking a driveway. He accepted it's not illegal but it's not acceptable anyway. Said we "should have realized" it would upset him!!

DP then said sorry I'll move it, I didn't mean to upset you and we'd like to keep good relations with you. The guy just kept having a go, and eventually went "well you have upset me, welcome to the neighbourhood" and stormed off.

I'm not being unreasonable here, right? Would you go and have a go at your neighbours for parking a car outside your house for a couple of days?? I keep overthinking it, is it rude to park outside someone's house?

Oh dear. The neighbourhood arse has said hello. All you can really do at this stage is take out a hit on him early on before you would be a suspect, as very plainly, this is going to lead to years and years of trouble.

I live in a large city and (pre parking controls) my next door neighbour once asked me to move my car three cars down so her daughter and SiL could park outside theirs as they'd got the baby. I said no as they are young and fit and can walk three cars distance. The inconvenience of getting in the car, moving and trying to get it into a tight space was something I wasn't prepared to do. If it was for someone disabled I would have done it in a flash.

Lovely that all the neighbours are in a WhatsApp group so ‘the rules’ can be shared but I have some questions @SirChenjins

• what if like the OP you’ve just moved into the street so aren’t privy to the WhatsApp group chat?


• what happened before WhatsApp was a thing?


• is there a splinter WhatsApp group chat for those neighbours that think it’s ridiculous?


• what if a visitor thinks, sod this, I’m visiting 24 I’ll park on the road outside 22 as there’s a space? Does no.24 get blackballed from the group chat?


• are there any exceptions? Someone earlier mentioned guests with small children or disabilities. Is there an aptitude test?

I look forward to your responses.

If it hadn’t been the parking I think he would have had a go at you for some other imagined infringement of ‘his rules’ to let you know he’s the boss. We had similar with a neighbour who complained that our visitor took ‘his’ space, (in the visitor parking area). We had to be quite assertive with him. We get on fine now.

We lived in a village with quite wide roads. We all had drives and had nobody had any complaints about parking except the elderly lady who lived opposite me.
Outside her house was like a small parking area. It was for temporary stopping only (.according to the council)
If anyone parked there. especially a tall van she would pace through the rooms in her house crying and wringing her hands.'constantly looing out of the windows.
This says more about her than the parking situation but it goes to show that some poeple are obsessed byt thier own little area

Some people are completely bats about parking on what they see as 'their bit of the road'. I was dropping a friend with limited mobility off to go to a christening and pulled up outside the church to let her out before going on to the car park about 500yds down the road and joining her. The second I stopped (engine was still running) a FURIOUS man came storming out of his house yelling at me not to park there! I would, actually, have been perfectly legally entitled to do so, but I prefer the car park because fewer trees means less risk of birds shitting all over my car.

If it hadn’t been the parking I think he would have had a go at you for some other imagined infringement of ‘his rules’ to let you know he’s the boss. We had similar with a neighbour who complained that our visitor took ‘his’ space, (in the visitor parking area). We had to be quite assertive with him. We get on fine now.

Yes, some people definitely set themselves up like Mr Khan as 'community leaders' at the top of the hierarchy, even though nobody else has ever sanctioned or even knows about this supposed hierarchy in the first place.

In their pathetic little world, happening to have lived there longer than anybody else (hence a higher proportion of them tend to be elderly) gains you lots of imaginary-king/queen-of-the-road points, as does owning your own home over those 'despicable' people with the 'audacity' to be tenants and not 'decent' homeowners - who, incidentally, most likely hand over far more money each month for the privilege of living there than does somebody who was lucky enough (again, usually by dint of being over a certain age - and I include myself in this) to get a mortgage 5, 10, 25, 50 years ago does/ever did.

Mr Khan is very funny and brilliantly observed as a fictional sit-com character, but the real-life people on whom he is based are an awful lot less funny if you end up having to live near them.

And before anybody misunderstands me, I really don't care what race or religion these people are - that has no bearing whatsoever on their own individual choices of entitled arseholery, and no one single group identity-marker has any kind of monopoly on this.

My late inlaws were entitled to a disabled bay outside their home for my mil and fil had a 'blue badge. '
If any car even stopped in their bay for even one second he would go out there to make sure they didn't hang about. Once they were visiting round at my house and their neighbours phoned them up to say that a car ( not known to anyone local ) had parked there. They debated this for about an hour ringing back and forth to see if the car had gone , it was so stressful ! I know that someone should never pay in a disabled bay without the right to do so , but the stress it caused them was huge to be honest and he also had the blue badges stolen out of his car too once ( they then had to buy a padlock to padlock them to the steering wheel !)
I know that this case is different, but parking and cars in general can cause so much stress.
The council was good to do this for them though ( this was a long time ago!)

1.what if like the OP you’ve just moved into the street so aren’t privy to the WhatsApp group chat?
It’s a very small street so we haul them outside and make them go through a initiation ceremony involving chicken feet, nudity and several bars of Gangnam Style. If they pass they’re inducted into the WhatsApp group.

what happened before WhatsApp was a thing?
we used semaphore

is there a splinter WhatsApp group chat for those neighbours that think it’s ridiculous?
not any more - we killed them dead

what if a visitor thinks, sod this, I’m visiting 24 I’ll park on the road outside 22 as there’s a space? Does no.24 get blackballed from the group chat?
there is no 22 or 24

are there any exceptions? Someone earlier mentioned guests with small children or disabilities. Is there an aptitude test?
absolutely. They are required to drive backwards while blindfolded with their hands tied round a specially constructed assault course involving live animals. If they hit one they fail the aptitude test.

Bravo 👏 @SirChenjins if it wasn’t for the fact that I’d fail the initiation and would end up dead for trying to start a second splinter group I’d love to live in your street 😉

If anyone had behaved like that at my door they’d have been sent away with a healthy portion of fuck off

@LoveAllCakes - and we’d love to have you 😂

Bloody hell, that new quote thing is annoying

YOur neighbour is being unreasonable. It is a public road and any one can park there and it does not belong to the house. We have a neighbour like that. They think that only them and their family can park outside their house and you get glared at if you park there. It is a public road and you do not own the bit of road out side your house. And for people to say you should knock and ask permission is completely ridiculous. People should not pander to this nonsense

We used to have a Lamborghini (I'm aware that marks me a $hit from the off) plus another car. One day the valeter was over cleaning both cars on our double driveway so I had to move one at a time for him to park his can with pump, vacuum etc next to the car he was cleaning. I moved lambo to the on street parking in the club de sac. As soon as the valeter had left this odious knob came knocking telling me that whilst I had a very expensive car it didn't give me the right to park it opposite his house. He was about 6'5 and I'm 5'. I was hugely upset and intimated. I had no intention of leaving a very expensive car out on the public street but just hadn't had a chance to move it. I still fantasise about doing something awful to him. We've moved house but it still sticks in memory - not everyday you get a random mouthful of abuse in your own home but some absolute knobber who clearly has feelings of inadequacy