Share the secret lives you’ve imagined for your neighbours with Sky Cinema - £300 voucher to be won NOW CLOSED

[JustineBMumsnet]

Though you live closely to each other, it’s possible that you know very little about your neighbours other than how terrible their parking is. But, that doesn’t stop you imagining what might be going on inside their walls. Inspired by their premiering of Keeping Up With the Joneses, starring Isla Fisher, John Hamm and Gal Gadot Sky Cinema would like to hear about the funny rumours you’ve heard about or the secret lives you’ve imagined for your neighbours (past or present).

Here’s what Sky Cinema has to say: “Sky Cinema makes it easy to find something you want to watch by showing a New movie Premiere every single day of the year. This summer there is a fantastic range of movies perfect for movie date night in from Keeping Up with the Joneses, to Allied to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them.

So, whether you’re convinced that the woman at the end of the road is MI5, you have some inventive theories about why the neighbours leave the house so early on a Sunday, or you’re a curtain twitcher who treats the neighbour’s lives like entertainment, share your stories below to be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £300 John Lewis voucher.

Thanks and good luck!

MNHQ

Standard Insight T&Cs apply

[voyager50]

When I lived in a flat in London there was a gay man in the flat above - who would often play 'It's raining men' very loudly two or three times before he went out at around midnight. I imagined that he was building his confidence up before heading out to see how many men he could pull on his night out!

[CopperPan]

We often hear a neighbour coming home in the early hours. I imagine they have a hectic glamorous social life, with parties going on until all hours.

Another neighbour is unusually friendly/nosy and is always asking questions, so definitely a spy.

[Namethecat]

Our neighbours are the twits. He cannot do a thing around the house except wash the car and mow the lawn. He dresses for every occasion. Golf outfit, gardening outift. wash the car outfit. He often leaves the house dressed in a suit and briefcase for the day but is retired ! We are sure he goes and spends the day in the library of has another woman and lives a secret life. The wife walks the dogs twice a day ,down the road (long road ) and comes back. She obviously is keeping a covert eye on said husband and his 2nd woman. Their older daughter who lives quite close by ,moves in when they are away for weekends or holidays and has at least a couple of men coming and going and they also wash their cars and bikes regularly. Perhaps it's a covert undercover car washing business !

[sharond101]

The woman down the road is a Gypsy (even though she has a house and all). She's been evicted from her Gypsy caravan and living on our street but her comings and goings to random places frequently throughout the day make her a schizophrenic gypsy who needs to obey commands from the gypsy King.

[NerrSnerr]

Our neighbours across the road paint their fence what seems like every month. I can't even imagine what that's all about. I wonder whether the husband does it to get some peace and quiet from his wife?

[Wilberforce2]

My Niece and her husband had bought a house but were lucky enough to be able to stay with my Sister while the decorating was being done. This was great but did mean that they were popping in and out at various times during the day and because of shift work this could be early/late/middle of the day which managed to raise suspicion with the neighbour across the road! She didn't think to chat to them instead she set up "surveillance" and wrote down all the times of their comings and goings which she then passed onto the police because they were obviously dealing drugs 😂 They weren't dealing drugs they were two young Police officers simply buying a house and decorating it when their shift patterns allowed!!

[Tonkatol]

We know our next door neighbours like to drink, get very loud and argumentative when they have been drinking and that, before married, she had a restraining order on him for attacking her in the street in London.

In our minds, having seen the police visit and take away various evidence boxes, her parents helped fund the purchase of the house, he doesn't seem to work much as he is a drug dealer and that is why there are forever cars pulling up, stopping for a few minutes and then driving off again. He has a pit bull - a typical drug dealers dog, and he is always frequenting the local pubs (2) to make connections and set up deals - my son works in one pub & socialises in the other, so he has fed us this info. Finally, he drink drives, as demonstrated by his horrendous parking and when they are entertaining in their garden, we get wafts of strange smelling smoke from over the fence.

I would love to know if any of my story is true!

[Quietvoiceplease]

I've got lovely NDNs in our current home, and in our last in fact. Our oddest neighbours were went I lived in a shared student house. The house next door was subdivided into flats and in one lived a (what seemed to me at the time) an elderly woman who dressed almost exclusively in leopard print, gold jewellery and fag ash, who lived with a much younger man, who we could never decide whether it was her son or not. We imagined she had a very glamorous life once - singing on the cruise ships, playing the 'clubs' - but had ended up living in a bedsit in a rough part of Birmingham, with a man who wanted her housing benefit.
She used to come out of her flat and stare at our house for ages before walking off. I'd find it a bit creepy now, but living in a large student house, and feeling young and invincible (and temporary in neighbours) we found it quite funny I think.
We stayed in that house 3 years. I bet we were awful neighbours tbh.

[hannahbjm]

I have a lad couple doors down and all she has in her recycling bags is about 300 bottles of irn bru a fortnight and that isnt even an exaggeration! Never any food packaging recycled either. I think she honestly must be a secret viking!

[ButterflyOfFreedom]

On of our neighbours - a lovely 50+ single lady- keeps herself to herself and is away quite a lot. I often wonder where she goes / what she does. It's probably somewhere quaint & peaceful like to the countryside for some time out but what if she is spy or undercover detective or something...

[Belmo]

Ours are a couple, and I don't think I've ever seen the lady leave the house! I do sometimes wonder what she does all day (sex line?!)

[ErinSophia]

My neighbour is an elderly gentleman, others in the street suggested he has a few girlfriends as many ladies were seen entering and leaving his house regularly, turns out they're his carers! Not very exciting I know.

[kath4]

We have a guy in the culdesac who is the spitting image of Father Christmas complete with long fluffy white beard. I'm guessing he's the real deal and lives a quiet life in my village most of the year round. I can hand on heart say I've yet to see him out and about around the immediate Christmas period.....speaks volumes!!! Although I've never seen him hang out a big velvety red suit on his rotary washing line yet :)

[1969angep]

Our neighbours both sides are retired. On one side they put up a small marquee every year for what looks like an al fresco black tie dinner. As it's summer you can hear various speeches and guffawing through the open windows and doors. I have visions of him being a secret Mason or something. They're off on a holiday to Russia next month so maybe he's an undercover agent for Donald Trump or something 😂

[IdaBiscuit]

We have a couple of wifeswappers who live at the end of the cul de sac. They are similar age and holiday together. No idea where the idea of wife swapping came from but we call them couple A and couple B

We also have a retired pilot, who now spends his days sitting in his front garden writing notes. We think he's employed by the government to report back on UFO activity

[ShatnersBassoon]

All of our neighbours have nicknames, and we imagine they all talk about us for various reasons. We think Howard and Hilda next door complain about our unwillingness to perfectly align the bins like they do on collection day. Brookside Hunk thinks I'm impressed by his tidy garage, but I so am not.

[DaisyDando]

On one side, my neighbour is Helen Mirren and on the other, my neighbour is Mary from Corrie. Which is nice. And not at all true, but both have a slight resemblance and sometimes I get a little bit muddled up when Helen is on the front of a magazine or Mary is teasing hapless Norris in the Kabin.

[vickyors]

We have a neighbour, an elderly gentleman. He's lovely and friendly, but very doddery. And, the curtains at the front of his house are always shut. Ok, so my sisters made me watch 'back to the future' too many times when I was tiny, but I always imagine him building some kind of machine like a nutty professor behind the closed curtains!

[boo2410]

We had neighbours who always seemed to have a lovely life always well turned out and truly likeable people and very good neighbours. My OH thought they were secretly a pair of swingers! I didn't think so and thought this was an over active imagination on his part.

[FlowerTink]

We have a neighbour who looks like Elvis...really looks like Elvis! He has the hair, he even owns a pair of blue suede shoes (I wish I was joking!). He has a pretty normal job but I secretly think that whenever he goes home he retreats to his Elvis shrine he's evidently built in his house....or he's a secret Elvis tribute act and is trying to keep it from everyone!

[StepAwayFromCake]

When I was a child, the bottom of our garden was a 3' deep border dense rhododendron thicket that towered over my head. Backing onto our garden fence was a ramshackle old shed with a corrugated iron roof and a metal chimney. I could just see it over the rhododendrons from my bedroom window.

There would often be rattlings and muted bangings. The occasional smoke, sometimes sparks, from the little chimney. Wisps of steam would appear from random areas of the shed.

I had never seen anyone at that house's windows, but I'd read The Treasure Seekers, and I knew what happened in empty houses! Coiners! Burglars melting down their illicit loot!
Dastardly deeds were a-doing in that secret thicket-hidden shed!

There was a police raid one night, with helicopters and dogs, involving several houses on our block. And after that, there were no more noises from The Shed. What more proof did I need?!

Decades later, I met train-mad dh and went on my first steam train ride. The smell threw me straight back to childhood...it was the smell that lingered at the bottom of the garden whenever there were noises from The Shed.

Our neighbour had not been a coiner or burglar. He had been nothing more sinister than a steam enthusiast tinkering happily away in his back garden.

Chatting to my mum about it, she said "Oh, yes, that was X. He was a lovely neighbour. We got on so well. He always helped me prune the rhododendrons, and he fixed so many things for me in his workshop. They moved away when their children grew up. The people who bought the house were nice enough. Kept themselves to themselves. Good neighbours, I suppose, but not the same."

"But what about the police raid?" I asked.

"That was a couple of years after X moved away. It was nothing to do with that house - it was 3 or 4 doors down on our side. They were growing drugs."

[ThenBellaDidSomethingVeryKind]

Lots of our neighbours have nicknames too😂 At our previous address, the couple next door never came out in daylight. Their curtains were always shut, but as we went to bed we'd hear them both take off on a motorbike. We decided they were vampires - possibly some of the Lost Boys cast!

[Hairq]

I'm convinced that the very unfriendly and judgy lady next door must be a secret swinger. She's constantly got her nose in the air about something and disapproves of everything we do, and I'm certain that nobody can put up a front of ring that perfect without hiding a dark secret.

[malisa]

We have a lovely neighbours living on both sides of us. A very friendly type that's says: "Good morning" and " Goodbye" and running away quickly in fear not to be drawn further into conversation. Maybe just too shy to speak.

[Mozarmstrong]

Neighbours are a right mixture. Some stay up late some get up early and some don't!! I know this because I do this too. We are clones of each other and now I'm worried as I don't like him up the road help!!!!!!