Harassed by elderly neighbours

[Puppytrashedmysofa]

My daughter lives on a mews with mostly elderly neighbours.Right from the start she has been harassed by three of them. Letters through her door about parking in visitors spaces , pathetic comments about what she is doing e.g smoking on her doorstep , being stared at when back from work.Her former direct neighbours about her age had the same ,but left quickly.
I'm at a loss what to do as a father.She is now looking for another rental because of it. One of them harassing is head of the residents committee, another owns two houses in the Mews.
I was helping my daughter last week and even though I pretended to not hear her ,she kept calling me , when I turned she made a pathetic comment about my car.
This is really frustrating because my daughter is a real sticker at things , wanting to move so soon is just not like her.

When I had my first house I had one set of neighbours who were great and one set that were bloody awful
The awful ones told everyone in the neighbourhood I was running a male brothel ( I had 4 male housemates, which is apparently very weird) as I was a too young to live there and couldn't possibly be a legitimate student with a house or lodgers.
I had a job before Uni so was older than most although I had a baby face and had managed to save the money for a deposit which meant I wouldn't be paying extortionate rent, I paid my mortgage instead.
Our houses all had short fences between the back gardens (covenant, we couldn't change them) and the awful neighbours would literally pull their chairs up to the fence and sit looking into my house and garden. She bitterly & loudly complained about everything we did.
I and my housemates grew a very thick skin and ignored them, we ended up laughing at their nastiness because it became so ridiculous. Yes we were students but we didn't have parties or unsociable music.
Notes went straight in the bin and we would go out of the way to ignore them when in the garden which I think frustrated them more than if we'd reacted. We may have pushed back a little the year we sent them a Christmas card with semi naked men on the front.
It wasn't easy to live with but after some good advice I decided ignoring and understanding it was them not me really helped.
The elderly neighbours on the other side were fab and when they needed help or favours like walking their dogs, going to the shops etc we were only too happy to help. I think this infuriated the miserable gits on the other side even more

@Puppytrashedmysofa who parked in the visitor spot? Dd or a friend? Not that it's a heinous crime!

I can't remember and I'm not going to drag it up with my daughter she's moving on but thanks for showing an interest.She's looking at another place where she lived before with lovely neighbours for three years with no problems except the landlords being a bit slow with repairs.
She didn't fit in there.She had a triangle of people around her that obviously didn't like her living on there patch.
The sideways walking Bush neighbour waited a full minute whilst I ignored her sorting my daughters garden calling me .All she said was I had an odd looking car and walked off because I was working there for my daughter.It was the drip,drip,drip of comments/bullying tactics e.g notes left on windscreens left at 10 at night with no name attached.They did it to her young neighbours too and they left after three months. Obviously I'm a bit bitter about it but the stress was not good for her at home where she should be relaxing after a tough day at work .Hopefully her next place will have normal people.

@Puppytrashedmysofa

It's relevant that they are elderly because....?

Maybe older then if elderly offends.
What do you think about the thread about my daughter being bullied?

Blimey, now it’s bullying to look at someone else walking past, and sweeping up dead leaves!!!
There’s nothing more annoying that that one person in the street who doesn’t look after their front garden, and nothing better than standing on the doorstep watching the world and his wife go by.

She’s not being bullied - get a grip! She’s been told in writing about visitor parking, someone’s asked her not to stand on the doorstep smoking, presumably because it’s bloody annoying to have second hand smoke wafting through your windows. She’s been ‘looked at’ and someone’s swept up her dead leaves.

Overgrown garden
Parking in the wrong place
Smoking on the doorstep

I can understand why she has received complaints

@Puppytrashedmysofa

Why is their age relevant at all?

@Puppytrashedmysofa

It's relevant that they are elderly because....?

Maybe older then if elderly offends .

It's not the words that is the problem. It's that their ages have no relevance to the discussion.

Well quite.

Can you imagine the responses if it said "harassed by Asian neighbours" or "Harassed by lesbian neighbours"

Is DD leaving fag butts behind when she smokes or filling up a plant pot (or similar)? I can imagine a naice gated community wouldn't be impressed with someone smoking on the door and doing that, especially if the smoke is getting into other houses

Smoking in an enclosed porch and she wasn't asked to stop smoking by the bush lady she lives two doors away.Where would you expect her to smoke,in her handkerchief size garden, or by the mews gate.The two foot high pile of leaves were deposited in front of her car in her allocated parking port/garage while she was at work and they were from a tree no where near her house.
The head of directors watched her for a couple of weeks he could still be doing it now.I' ll ask her today about the other incidents depending how she is.She worked seven days on the trot
Maybe we're different because I wouldn't take part in any of this.
Would you?

She fills a plant pot by her door.Its not great to look at but at least she's tidy.What you mean by naice

Bushes slightly more leggy than they should be. But rain and heat leads to qiuck growing plants.I sort them when asked.

Maybe she could use it as an opportunity to give up smoking?

i wouldn’t want someone smoking near my house either especially in the summer when windows are open.

She’s being bullied. I’d just ignore or laugh openly.

Dump the leaves in the neighbours garden. If you can’t have a fag outside your own front door then where can you? I’d be inclined to put an easy chair there and a very large ashtray. The smell disappears in minutes.

The leaves being dumped is odd, but honestly, if I lived somewhere like that (it sounds like a nicely kept street - the kind many people want to live in) and a new person moved in and started smoking at the front and leaving their stubs in a plant pot (grim), parking in the wrong place and not keeping their front garden tidy (you've said it's tiny, so it shouldn't take long to do) then I'd be a bit pissed off too. If this is how she is at the beginning when most people are trying to get off on the right foot with their new neighbours then I'd be wondering what more was to come.

Really ?? People are allowed to smoke outside their home, the parking situation was sorted out early on and the tidiness of someone's front garden is none of your business!

really only three options. fight (copnfrton, intimidate - how about filming them when they are looking at her, staring back with sunglasses, just out on her porch), flight (move), indifference (when they come to complain, maybe not talk back to them, not say hi, no engagement whatsoever). I dont think the 4th option of being lovely will work with these kinds of people tbh.

*confront

The bush lady smokes aswell.Yes she thought it was lovely too.I see you avoided the six foot bloke staring at her.What do you think about that?Would you like it?
It's not as if she plays loud music e.t.c .How do you get off on the right foot.Maybe they should have invited her onto the Mews WhatsApp group. That would have been nice don't you think?

Someone was probably just sweeping up the leaves into a pile and hadn't picked them up yet. It's not necessarily a targeted insult.

Why does she need you to deal with the garden for her? If she wants to live somewhere with one, she needs to grow up and buy a pair of secateurs.

Thanks I sorted the leaves in a bag used for leave mulch.I don't know much about smoking but she hasn't got a back garden, so she has no other option really.
I'm off to work now thanks.p

Six foot blokes staring at me really don't bother me. It sounds like she's feeling got at, but as many of us on here have said, her neighbours are simply letting her know about the parking, they don't want smoke wafting about their front doors (she could go for a walk out of the street - or give up and save herself a fortune), and that keeping her tiny garden tidy is quite a nice, neighbourly thing to do. Perhaps while she's outside puffing on her fag she could snip about with the secateurs?