Neighbours, Everybody Needs Good Neighbours

It recently occured to me that we must have the worst neighbours in all the land. Before Cindy and I tied the knot, we were quite aware of the  noisy neighbours at her parents house. As we were younger and still partying till the early hours of morning, they didn’t really bother us.  However –  fast forward 4 years to when we are married, Cindy was 7 months pregnant and we had just taken over her parent’s house.

It started out splendidly, a few days after we moved in the father who lived next door popped his head over the wall, while I was hard at work doing some DIY.  He was very friendly, introduced himself and offered assistance when ever the need arose. This gave me warm fuzzy feelings of comfort, little did I know the fuzz would soon burn into a pit of fire which would make my blood boil.  Just a week later, the rest of the extended family arrived from some farm for the December holidays. All 300 of them. Now this may well be an exaggeration, however from our side of the wall, you would swear there was 300 wild farm workers on the other side.   Now, since we not living in Constantia, their front door and entertainment room door sits under a carport which literally touches our boundary and acts as an amplifier of all their glorious noises.  So it’s about 1m away from our kitchen door, lounge window, bathroom and then soon to be baby room. Just to give an indication of the amazing ability of this amplifying device, at 7:00pm you can listen to their TV playing Sevende Laan in full HD sound quality in any of the rooms mentioned above.

So our first month in our long desired home was filled with shouting and fighting, swearing and banging. The next few months were a lot more bearable as the family had shrunk down to the usual 50 or so that stay there. They were surprisingly quiet except for the occasional rubble loadings at 2am. Who!? and why!? would you load rubble into the back of a bukky under your carport at 2am in the morning! We suspected that they might be a family of vampires who slept during the day or nocturnal creatures. Anyway after the rubble loads ended, beautiful little Kyla was born and her room was waiting, but the neighbours too had a new arrival…oh yes…a beautiful little newborn Alsatian! How did we know? Well because all day and all night this thing would cry non stop in a high pitched loud howl. At first our 2 labs went absolutely ballistic, barking, as if to say “Shut it you irritating little stupid fur ball!!”.  Eventually after a few days our dogs gave up the fight, mostly because we would lock them inside. Funny that we would do something about our dogs. You know, neighbourly courtesy maybe.  After a few days, we got a little concerned. This poor dog didn’t sound happy and the spy in me decided to find out why. Suited up with camera phone and step ladder I managed to get a look at the poor thing. It was chained with a metre long chain to the pool pump.  NOT COOL! We deliberated about phoning the SPCA and when we were just about to, they decided to untie him and bring him inside. Great, so they do care.  Many months past with no dog, we suspected they had braaied him in their illegally built orange 5m high braai on our boundary, or gave him away. Then to satisfy our curiosity he awoke with a matured voice box and barked with the greatest of vigour. A continuous annoying bark which I’ve never heard before. Kyla after a few nights of waking, eventually got use to it and slept through. Some nights were bad and ended with us calling the police. What a joy it is to talk to someone who cant speak English and is meant to take down details for someone in trouble. So the first 2 times the police did bugger all.

Another day I missed the garbage truck and at impulse ran down the road in my pj’s with the weeley bin to catch the guys. I was joined halfway in sprint by one of the 50 neighbours. After our race we chatted for a mere 3 seconds before being interupted by the dog trying to escape through the open gate. He was terrified and had what looked like a homemade metal brace through his leg. The neighbour joked about the dog in a friendly way and dragged it inside. Cindy was immediately on the phone with the SPCA, who promised to call us back. Weeks past and we heard nothing. Again the spy in me needed to be satisfied. I straped a head torch to my head and armed myself with the step ladder.  The mission was succesful as I found that he was not tied up and his leg was healed.  He continued to bark, and I continued to yell, shine torches at him, eventually it improved, untill recently. Just a few days ago I phoned noise control, who immediately after hearing my story said “Where did you get this number!…ag…I’ll send a police car.” Gee thanks, well done for doing your job. Police finally came and the barking stopped for a week, but only to start again a few days later. Called the police this time as noise control didnt answer, only to get, “Sir what can we do with a dog?”. I’ve tried phoning the neighbours, however they never answer, left messages but no answer. My new tactic is to shout at it everytime it starts, this makes it shutup for a few hours. It amazes me that that is all the effort it takes…So it continues

Now the fun doesnt end there. Not only is the dog a nuisance, but the family enjoys music. Truly and througlily enjoys music. Besides walking up the driveway screaming out the latest R&B track, their friends arrive with their subwoofing ghetto mobiles, which vibrate our windows. Then because no one hears them coming 5 roads down, they need to hoot a couple of times under the carport. Then still feeling a little ignored, they feel the need to get out and yell for the family to open the door. This process is reversed on departure. I am so grateful that they don’t have sing star or karaoke.  The greatest of all these times is when the golden arrow bus comes to drop off a bus load of crazy people. One of these times the father popped his head over and warned us politely, “My daughter just got married so we going to make a noise” OH really!! that’s weird! Well I politley told him that that’s not going to happen. We have a child whose asleep and you always wake her up! To my amazement they kept it down to a decent level. This courtesy soon wore off a few parties later.  One time I went into the back garden to do my duties, only to find scattered beer bottles on our lawn. The sons were cleaning over the wall, so I told them what I found and passed it to them, but they denied it was theirs and refused to take it. Of course! It must have rained beer bottles last night! My bad for making accusations! To top all this off, the family is part of the coons, and there isnt enough time to describe the joys experienced during that time of the year.

After getting that all out, and feeling a little sane again, I’ve decided to not write a paragraph  for each category of noise or nuisence, so here’s some top moments we have experienced.

• Begging for R50 for cigerettes – expensive cigerretes.
• Parking outside our house and one time in our driveway.
• Driving in to our driveway to turn their car around to drive down the wrong way – it’s a one way.
• Driving down the the wrong way down the one way.
• Leaving food wrappers on our front verge – must have rained food wrappers.
• Stealing our bin, then bringing it out 3 weeks later full of maggots.
• Having an orange house – better than the previous blue.
• Closing their windows every night with such force we are waiting for the glass to shatter.
• Having a fruit tree that keeps growing back over our wall and dropping fruit on our lawn giving our dogs diarrhoea.
• Screaming each others names, when they are 1m apart.
• Marco polo, the screaming version
• Stealing our dog toys –  this is only a suspition, however all our dog toys vanished in the space of a day.

So there you have it. If they have a competition for the worst neighbours, I think they might win.  If you ever need to test the levels of your patience, then come stay with us. We can only hope that the family moves or the house gets hit my a meteor, because there isn’t a remedy for this level of inconsideration.