Possibly not the right forum really, but I wasn’t sure and as it concerns neighbours it can go here!
We’ve lived in our house for 2.5 years. It’s a small street with only 4 houses, ours is on the end. We don’t really “know” our neighbours too well as we both work and Covid etc limited the hellos, but we’ve had lots of chats with all the other houses and send Xmas cards etc.
The house next door to us has a very odd couple in. They’re 60s I guess but very reclusive. The lady never goes out, the curtains are never open and the man is a little odd too, he goes out more but seems to have a whacky sense of humour and has told us on a few occasions that he has to go for his morning run at sunrise so his wife doesn’t notice he’s gone.
Anyway, we’ve spoken to them quite a lot of times as our back garden wall is low, the lady has always been very friendly, slightly over friendly in fact, and has been very open that she has suffered with anxiety and depression etc which we were very understanding of. Never a cross word has been said. In fact if you had asked me a few days ago I’d have said we got on well with all the neighbours.
A few weeks ago the police knocked our door and asked if we were aware of any neighbour issues in the street. We weren’t, that was that. Yesterday they called again and asked to come in. It transpires that the lady next door has called the police on us multiple times! They told me of 3 reasons…..but there may have been more I’m not sure.
1 Our front fence is broken. She told them this is deliberate just to spite them. The fence in question is a good 30 years old, a wooden picket running 8 feet long to separate our front gardens,it is 2 foot tall. It is rotten and has now leaned towards their side by a few degrees but is not lying down, we do keep jamming it straight again but the wind always pulls it back one way or the other. We actually spoke to them and said we will fix it ASAP but as I’m currently off work undergoing cancer treatment it’s not top priority and we don’t have cash to spare. We offered to remove it completely and they said no. If I wanted to be pissy I could point out that the fact they haven’t resolved a leak in their porch roof has resulted in our fence becoming water damaged and rotting but I’m not so petty.
- We have “stolen her bin bags”. This is a weird one, a few months ago we inadvertently brought their recycling bag in instead of ours. When we noticed the very next morning I popped it back over the fence into their garden. This is where the bag still lies to this day. They haven’t touched it despite doing some gardening AROUND it, like it is now dead to them. And police worthy clearly.
3 Yesterday’s incident. She has accused us of leaving chicken bones in her garden. We don’t even eat chickens for starters as I hate dealing with the carcasses and also why would anyone do that?!
The main reason I’m so bloody furious about it is that she has reported each one as a hate crime because she is black and we must be racist. I’m actually so angry about that because how dare she cast aspersions like that on us over nothing?! She clearly has very deep MH issues but I am so cross and disgusted that she has called us racists with absolutely no basis and this is 100000% not even a tiny bit true. The police were very apologetic, said they’re fully aware it is a MH issue and that we aren’t in any kind of trouble and they were only letting us know so we could “safeguard” ourselves. The hate crime team have dismissed it back to community policing, and they have opted not to ask us before now as the issues reported are clearly unreal/silly. I don’t know what safeguarding ourselves means, I assume so we watch our interactions with them now but as we haven’t done anything or had any kind of falling out I don’t really see what we can alter or avoid. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now? Ignore next door totally? I’m shocked that she’s done it, not once but multiple times while also being nice as pie to us? She actually cried when I told her I had cancer, and called over the wall to see how I was post surgery, all the while also apparently thinking we’re racists mounting the worlds most bizarre crime spree?