Should I ask my neighbours if we can have designated times to sit in the garden?

[Guarddogdaschunds]

I will preface by saying that it is possible this heatwave has affected my rational thinking. So I will bite- I am so sick of listening to my neighbours having their dinner in the garden and having to listen to their booming voices for hours on end. It has reached the stage where we feel relegated indoors, especially in the evenings.

We live in a new build in close proximity to our neighbours so can hear everything as you can imagine. They are a couple in their early 30's (I think), no kids. The man with the booming voice works from home and has taken to working from his garden throughout the day, often vaping. My kids are off school, trying to make the best of the time off and I really don't think they should have to hear the details of his teams meetings. Surely he should work inside and allow people peaceful enjoyment of their gardens? I have never worked from home, but wouldn't it be considered a GDPR breach if others can hear?

They have had friends over for BBQs the previous 2 nights and have been sitting outside chatting until around 9pm. The BBQ smell lingered for so long and of course they were all vaping and drinking alcohol. One of their friends was regaling them with tales of her dating escapades-hardly an appropriate topic for my 9 year old to have in earshot. I also don't want my kids damaging their lungs inhaling all of those disgusting vape particles. The women have also been prancing around in very skimpy bikinis. I know women are entitled to wear what they want, but come on-all the neighbours can see if they look outside their upstairs windows! I'm also concerned as yesterday, the visiting friends were there for several hours and appeared to drive themselves home- were they over the limit?

On both occasions, I have brought my kids inside, as I don't want them to hear the sordid details of their conversations. I also feel awkward that they are only a few metres away from me, so I don't want to have my dinner outside in case they listen to our conversation. Would I be unreasonable to pop over or post a note through their door requesting that we have an outdoor mealtime rota so we can all enjoy our gardens in peace-as we are entitled to?

You need to match their energy. Put on loud music to drown out the team calls. Send the kids out with balls and water pistols. Do not tell them off when they get over excited
See if anything changes next door.

lol

Or you could act like a normal person and just speak to them and say ‘ just a heads up, we’re only the other side of the fence so we heard every detail of Lydia’s love life. Could you take it indoors and keep your voices down when the conversation is not child friendly please?’

Though actually I am not sure direct communication is normal on MN where passive aggressive ‘wit’ and cringing from any communication as ‘confrontation’ is more normal.

(Ok, I bit! Women in skimpy bikins in suburbia? People plummeting from upstairs windows like lemmings off a cliff the verify just how skimpy is skimpy? Has anyone told the DM?)

Babe, have you thought about taking up vaping? Its apparently quite calming.

If women in bikinis are prancing, I think the appropriate thing to do would be to flounce round rather than pop.

Sounds like they are just enjoying their garden to be honest, you’d look really silly to ask such a thing!

I suggest you sell up and move to the countryside

I see the heatwave is sparking even more ludicrously made up threads today, and it’s not even 9am!

I don't think OP is coming back but I actually don't care if it's real or not it's given me such a laugh this morning 😂

I wonder what prancing looks like. Can you clarify op, is this what they were doing op in their skimpy bikinis?

enquiring minds need to know about these prancing women.

The prancing bikini women also stood out to me! And questioning if the friends were over the limit. It was fairly reasonable until that as clearly you have been overthinking and now are finding reasons to dislike this couple.

I think WFH in the garden when you are on calls all day is unfair to the neighbours. I also thinking playing loud music and talking unnecessarily loudly is unfair. But talking until 9pm, having conversations, or wearing what they want in their own garden isn’t something you can police.

If the conversations get very loud and raunchy or the guy is basically shouting on the phone I think it would be OK to strike up a “by the way, did you know we can hear you” type conversation. But the heatwave will be over soon, you can shut your windows and the couple will stop their prancing. I do sympathise as I have a family next door with unnecessarily loud voices but as long as they are not truly being unreasonable you need to try to rub along together. Have you or they recently moved in or is this a thing every summer?

This

Also, why is it in stories like this a woman is always “prancing” around in said bikini? What’s does that mean exactly?!!

Oh you think people shouldn't be allowed to wear bikinis in their own garden in a heatwave? Why's that? Do you think there's something offensive about the female body?

You sound preposterous.

Or was it more of a Miranda 'gallop ?'

Just send your kids out to run around, screaming. Make your own noise. Play music.

I think it’s more she feels the bikinis shouldn’t be too skimpy but mainly they shouldn’t prance in their gardens when wearing said bikinis, and obviously they should have a time slot to use their garden, and be banned from it at other times.

YANBU to be pissed off with this scenario, I would also hate it, but YABU to think you can do anything about it (except move)

I actually don’t think YABU OP. I wouldn’t want to hear any of this either. but you can’t expect them to modify any of this. Apart from maybe the teams calls. it’s not GDPR but generally if your teams calls can be overheard in most companies this would be a breach of data confidentiality. So the only thing you could do it tell him you can hear every word of his calls so for confidentiality purposes he should move indoors.

for the rest there’s nothing you can do but you can make your own noise. Can you plant more bushes and trees for more screening?

Heatwave will be over soon OP and things will return to normal.

Haha

Neighbours are awful. I recommend living in a detached house with neighbours at a reasonable distance. It's great.

I agree with this. My boys had lots of fun with their supersoaker water guns ....

It's the weather, it's done your head in. It's done mine in too. For comparison, our next door neighbour has chosen this week to dig up his drive (runs adjacent to our house) and most of his lawn. This has been very hard work for him and his sons, but they have persevered from dawn to dark, and great news, the tarmac lorry comes this afternoon.
They are a lovely family and we've been friends since they moved in, yet when we had a quick thunder storm I couldn't help wishing that them and their blasted pneumatic drills would be..
But I held back.
So should you.

Put some music on your side, not loud but enough that it drowns them out a bit and enjoy!

The vape thing sucks, I agree with you, that's really unfortunate. Hopefully you can move your kids to a part of the garden where it's not bad.

Heat is definitely getting to you.

This is prancing. Just imagine it in a bikini- the horror!