To wonder why people seem to forget that if they're sitting talking in their gardens, WE CAN HEAR YOU!

[Eeepsh]

I'm sitting open mouthed listening to the personal details of the life of our next-door but one neighbour. Does she think no-one else might be sitting in their gardens on this gorgeous sunny day.

And yesterday, I was waiting in the car with the windows open waiting to pick up DS1, and had to endure a racist rant from the man in the garden of a nearby house.

incredible!

I imagine most racists have neighbours. Racists walk among us, you know.

Unashamed to say I used to be all ears during the odd blazing row next door. I was once straight on the email, agog to dh (working abroad at the time) - relating what I’d heard. ‘I’m not fucking well fucking anybody else, OK?? I’m fucking up to here - I’ve got no fucking money - ‘ etc.

All at super-volume.

The couple split and sold the house not long afterwards.

You'd hear my OH in that circumstance She has a loud voice and seems totally unable to moderate it.

So you are relaxing on a sunlounger in your garden, nextdoor are talking at normal volume, how do you not hear them? Can you turn your ears off?

If you realise you’ll be shot down in flames then I suspect you understand the problem with ‘all lives matter’ perfectly and just jumped at the chance to be obtuse

Just don't pay attention? Like in any high density living area? I mean, people enjoying their garden have a right to talk at a normal volume.

You really do almost sound as if you're hinting at Dolores Umbridge being your expression guru. Come out with it - you think it's impossible to zone out noise or at least it's some superhuman power, but science behind acclimatisation proves you, at best, wrong. Sometimes we all need to pull up our big girl pants and learn to get along.

how on earth does acclimatisation = blocking out noise?
I used to live in an area with sirens going off all the time - I might have got 'used' to it, but I still heard them, I couldn't just turn my ears off!
Baby used to cry a lot - sadly I didn't manage to acclimatise myself to stop hearing it no matter how often it happened.
Dog next door barking = yep wasn't magically less annoying the 100th time than the first!
If everyone could just 'zone out' of noises they didn't want to hear, noise complaints would be zero and headphone companies would go out of business.

I feel hard done by. I can hear my NDN quite often, and it can be annoying, e.g. my bed is against a party wall and the noise occasionally keeps me up at night but they don't speak English so I can't earwig on any juicy gossip. It's the worst of both worlds!

I think they would expect you to mind your own business and to have better things to do than stand around listening to their conversations, to be quite honest.

Why didn't you say something to them ?

Oh god yes. Every Sunday without fail we have to listen to our neighbour’s daughter performance parenting the grandchild 🙄shrieking, animal noises and general “me, me,me…..aren’t I a wonderful mother”😩🤮

Parenting your own child by having fun with them in a private space is not a "performance". You'd have to be completely narcissistic to assume it's for your benefit. Wind your neck in.

@MrsSunshine2b I don’t recall stating anywhere that I thought it was “for my benefit”?

Correct me if I’m wrong, please 🤣

The poor kid spends more time crying so I don’t particularly think they enjoy it either 🤣

pahaha this has occurred to me a few times over the past couple of nights pretending to be a range of patients so my friend can practice clinical exams over video call with the windows open. The neighbours have been able to hear me discuss my drug habits, STI exposure, insistence upon a risky natural birth, refusal to declare seizure to the DVLA, threatening the Dr, god knows what they must think!!

I know somebody many years ago who lived in a busy road with lots of pubs . They rigged up their baby monitor in their front garden out of sight near the main road to pick up passing conversations. The ones on Saturday night when the pubs chucked out were hilarious 😆.

Why on earth would anyone do that?

Don't know didn't ask .

When I worked for one of the Big Four Accounting Firms, the senior partner would often ring the department manager if he heard colleague discussing clients in the lift... Basically, you never say anything lest someone overhear, I was once bollocked for telling a client that a partner was overseas!

Next door neighbours in their hot tub discussing sexually transmitted diseases with their mates - basically playing STD bingo.

That was what finally persuaded us to move.