To feel almost murderous rage at my inconsiderate neighbours

[Playingvideogames]

I live in Devon. I’m not joking when I say it’s been raining solidly (and I mean solidly) for 45 days now. We are the worst hit area in the country, massively flooded, haven’t seen the light of day really since Christmas. It’s been bloody awful.

Today I wake up to a gorgeous blue sky and think… WASHING!!! And everyone on the estate clearly has the same idea - lots of full washing lines everywhere. Our first chance to dry clothes outside since October!

Not only that but twice a year or so I wash all my sofa cushion covers. They’re stiff fabric so it takes 3 loads, but I finally got them all done by 2pm and popped out.

I’ve just come back and some arsehole a couple of houses away has only gone and lit a massive bloody bonfire. Fucking why???? All my washing is ruined and stinks, including the sofa cushions. My neighbours must feel similarly. The first beautiful day in months, and outside reeks and is making my eyes water.

AIBU to think while it’s not illegal (as no doubt I will be told!) this is the height of arseholery, and who the fuck has a bonfire when it isn’t November 5th???

Arghhhhh

https://www.colchester.gov.uk/environmental-protection/report-a-bonfire/?id=&page=report--a--smoke,--odour--or--fume--problem

Might help

My In Laws who I love dearly, but they are some of the worst for this, they live in the Cotswolds in a beautiful village but dear god they burn so much shit on their log burner, yes the cardboard is fine but plastic and polystyrene!
I've seen chocking smoke out of their chimney like a new Pope is being announced and when I say your grandchildren would be horrified at you doing this they say "Oh no one will know"
Well apart from half the village chocking and their washing smelling of burnt plastic.
But if a few houses get built on a bit of land, they knew old Stan grazed sheep on it's a destruction of the environment!

Many years ago some neighbours down the road to my parents lit a bonfire in their garden and it accidentally set fire to another neighbour's shed. The fire brigade had to come and put it out and they had to replace the shed.

rural property with a fair amount of land and we generate a fair bit of garden waste that isn’t usable for the wood burner but also isn’t readily compostable. Following storms last year we were doing bonfires almost weekly to get rid of mistletoe from fallen trees. Understand it might feel strange if you are urban nd have a small garden, but round us all of our neighbours have a few bonfires a year.

I agree. I have a neighbour like yours and really don’t understand people having bonfires on a hot summer’s day.

This is where being the slightly crazy unhinged neighbour that no one wants to piss off really helps. I’ve shouted out my bedroom window at neighbours to stop burning stuff and stop being inconsiderate before. I’d rather do that than just quietly be annoyed.

You are not unreasonable! My old neighbour used to light her outdoor fire chimney thing at about six/ seven o'clock in the summer when we'd have the patio doors and windows open, and washing on the line. Me and DH would race out to get it in but it's pretty futile.
she was lovely and lived alone. we didn't say anything because she looked really relaxed with a glass of wine, just enjoying herself.

I had old neighbours who did this, weeks of rain and the first decent day every inch on my washing line was full and the guy next door lit a bloody bonfire (he was burning rubbish instead of paying for a blood bin bag) so the whole place was full of acrid black smoke.

We ended up buying a dryer!

Oh you sound like lovely neighbours!

Ahh thank you!

Is this a new craze? I haven't seen people having all these fires in the back gardens near me.

My neighbours do this, pisses me off so much! I don't understand how they generate so much rubbish that they need to burn it?! Or at least do the decent thing and warn people so they can bring the washing in.

Threads like this make me realise how lucky we were as kids, we lived in the kind of area where if you wanted a bonfire (pretty much only Autumn weekends) first step was to check no neighbours had their washing out!

Might be worth checking online to see if you’re in a smoke-free area, OP! We are and it means no bonfires or anything other than a BBQ. No chimineas even!

I feel your pain. We once had people next door who were fond of a bonfire, well he was. I think he was almost too fond of fire. I once saw him running in and out of the house putting weird stuff on the bonfire to keep it going, bits of paper, slices of bread, a t shirt… His finest moment was burning a mattress, or rather trying too, they don’t burn well, one Good Friday.

When they left we sat upstairs drinking a bottle of red and watched them leave.

One summer weekend afternoon I came home from doing some grocery shopping and my DC met me at door bouncing with excitement, they were absolutely gleeful that “Daddy’s having a water fight with the neighbours at the bottom of the garden!”

I rushed out to find DH standing (in his slippers) by the fence adjoining our neighbours using our garden hose to spray a huge pile, approx 5 feet high, of now smouldering rubbish. DH said that he’d asked for the bonfire to be put out (it wasn’t) so he was now taking action as our DC couldn’t play in the garden because of the acrid smoke which was also blowing into our home.
Pyromaniac Neighbour (PN) was desperately trying to relight the bonfire with firelighters and lighter fluid😱
PN’s wife was shouting that he had to come inside to have his tea NOW and PN would have to relight his bonfire in the morning😳
My DH told him he’d be back with the hosepipe if PN so much as struck a match near the pile of rubbish.
My victorious DH walked back to me and DC, standing agog, whistling Relight My Fire🤣

DC still refer to the “Battle of the Bonfire” as one of the best things that ever happened to them😂😂

I'd only been gone for half an hour!

One of the things I remember from my childhood is the bonfires my uncle and father lit on the family allotment. The smell of wood smoke and old brambles was very distinctive. It was the accepted way of getting rid of rubbish. However people do not hang washing out on allotments. I dont think I have ever lit a bonfire myself.

There is little you can safely burn at home that is also allowed at all. Anything painted or treated isnt allowed. No electronics, no plastics. Nothing wet, no green garden waste, the list goes on . . . . . .

Who has any realistically large enough quantity of anything that can be legally burnt, that requires a fire to burn it?

Used to live in a house with a small gravel back garden except one huge deciduous tree. The amount of twigs and branches that would fall or be trimmed off that was insane, as well as all the dead leaves in autumn. I’d let them dry out in the incinerator for a few days and usually throw in any sensitive household documents we no longer needed as well. Now in a much bigger garden with half a dozen trees and many bushes - of course some of that will go to burning! Respectfully and with neighbours on board, obviously. And not at the moment because this blinking rain won’t let anything dry 😂

I have a neighbour two gardens away at the end of my garden who used to have regular huge bonfires. You could see the flames roaring up above their 6ft fence and they were often started early afternoon on a nice day. Now they've built a huge wooden building that takes up a large part of their garden, so the bonfires have stopped (yay!) I suspect one of their young adult sons lives in it (had a baby with his gf).

We also got new neighbours a few gardens down to the side of us a few years ago. He too seemed to be a fire lover. He cut down a hedge and started burning it at midday before allowing it to dry out. You can imagine the smoke and smell on a beautiful day. I took pictures from my upstairs window and sent them to the council (they have a service where you can make a bonfire complaint) who were brilliant and sent someone round to have a word. He hasn't done it since I'm pleased to say. Check your own council web page to see if they have a similar service.

I feel your pain. I have a fire loving idiot neighbour who regularly used to have massive bonfires where I could see the flames higher than my 9ft conifer hedge. I sometimes used to put it out with a hosepipe while shouting at him that one day he’d burn my house down. I used to call the fire brigade as well who always gas lit me that I was over reacting. Well one day he set my hedge, my sheds , chicken enclosures and my garden office on fire, we lost all contents and nearly the house. Cost over 50k worth of damage.

my advice if you ever think someone has a bonfire which is too big or too close to a fence call the fire brigade every single time.

Just goes to show how easily a bonfire can get out of control.
Sorry you went through that.

We once lived in a flat which came with the use of a large, overgrown community "garden" or wilderness on the side of a hill. The man who sold us the flat seemed to think that he still lived there, at least as far as use of the garden went, and what he liked to do in the garden was collect rubbish and build bonfires down at the bottom of the slope (which was a stone retaining wall and a road away from a housing estate on the level). He would light them, enjoy them for a bit, and then go off home leaving them to do their own thing, which on one occasion meant the fire got into the roots of a tree and smouldered there, and it fell down a few days later.

As a result of this we learned two things. The first was that it was illegal, in that area, to light a bonfire more than thirty yards from a source of available water to put it out, and no, a bucket full of water didn't count, it had to be a hose. And the houses in the housing estate didn't count because they didn't have the relevant hose and wouldn't have allowed him to use it if they had, because they liked to hang out their washing. The other was that the fire brigade would turn out twice to put out an illegally-lit fire that had got out of hand among the trees and undergrowth, but the second time they would issue a dire Warning to the person who had lit it (we had witnesses); the third time, they fined him three thousand pounds to cover the cost of the call-out.

Did I feel bad about dobbing him in? No. I was fond of the tree that was burned down because of his wanton stupidity.

This has happened to me with barbecues in the summer. Makes your washing stink!

Last year when the weather was beautiful, my next door neighbours had house guests for 2 weeks who smoked weed for the entire time, rendering my back garden unusable. It was boiling hot and I couldn’t have my windows open at all as they’d even get up throughout the night to smoke. It was horrendous.