July

July already. We've had Ascot and now Wimbledon. Before too long we'll be getting the fairy lights up for Christmas.
It's been quite the year. Not only have we dealt with important things like cancer, and Violet going on her first trip abroad with college, but unimportant stupidity continues to dominate too.

It's something I've mentioned before, but now I need to talk about it again in case something serious happens.
When work on the kitchen started last year, it took a whole two days before the horrible woman next door started complaining. In many ways I understood her feelings, as on the first day the whole entire cast turned up to be instructed on the plans, so there was a lot going on and a lot of vans. I was overwhelmed. But it was for about an hour, then most vehicles went off and only those that needed to stay stayed. I saw the Mr next door and apologised, telling him what was going on, timescale, and assured him that I'd make sure they weren't inconvenienced too much. Which is all you can do.
Long story short, his wife decided she did not have enough room to get in and out of the drive, and she was not happy. Our drive is not a shared drive. Shared access, but not shared drive. she thinks she owns it all, she does not, she's too thick to understand the deeds. Not my problem. She did have enough room, just not as much as she wanted because she's a crap driver. God knows how she manages to park in supermarket car parks, must be so hard for her!
She spent June - December 2022 taking photos of anyone in our drive, so whenever we had work done I had to pre warn all workers that she would be taking pics and to ignore her as she wasn't quite right. Not sure what she did with the photos, but she took them anyway.

Her unhappiness meant she has given herself permission to 'punish' us forever more. Since June she has flytipped in our garden, everything from her garden cuttings, a downpipe, Mcdonalds breakfast papers and anything else she felt like chucking over. She spent a rainy night in December (think she was drunk) waving empty beer bottles in her hands to set off our security light as she chanted 'bastards' - our crime this time was to build a shelter for our chairs that we couldn't sit on for fear of missiles being thrown overhead. They were away over Christmas so we built it then, had she been there she'd have done nothing but sweep up leaves and chuck over as she'd done before. She has hacked our plants to the point of us not only taking down plants and trellis that had been up years before they moved in, but cut things back to over a foot away from the boundary to stop her butchering everything in sight.
We emptied our garage to enable one of the cars to be stashed in there, not out of respect, but so we NEVER had to see her ugly complaining face even though we had every right to park it on our drive. In short, we've done what we could to keep that old hag out of our face because we don't want to see it or hear from it. Something I told her husband in exactly that way.
when you seek legal advice (of course we did) you are told two things. Firstly, talk to people see if things can be sorted out. And, document all that happens with photos/videos if possible. Done and done.
Ha. Spoke to the Mr way back in August last year. He went from telling me he had no idea why she took photos of people in our drive, to lying that the garden cuttings and downpipe had been caused by the 'wind' - debunked easily - to then saying that she felt she hadn't been able to get in or out of her drive easily ... hence her bad behaviour... then admitted it hadn't been the case (yep, knew that as it was something I'd checked on EVERY DAY), and went on to whine that me bringing it up had caused problems between them. Um. No. His wife caused problems when she felt she could put her filthy hands on our property. In this past week alone she has hacked at our plants twice, leaning over the wall to do so, then shoving back over the wall. So trespass and flytipping. some might call it anti social behaviour. I call it incredibly petty. I also told him that I was afraid to leave the house in case we returned to find windows smashed in or it on fire. He looked me in the eye and said 'don't worry about that'. But I did and I do. He goes away for weekends leaving her alone and that's when she likes to hack our plants and call us names. He doesn't get it because he wants to pretend everything's ok.

A few weeks ago I was at our bin that I'd taken to the bottom of the drive ready for the next day, she appeared from around a car with a dog - dog sitting as they don't have one - when she saw me she said loud enough for me to hear, 'oh look, it's the witch'.
Why? Why does she have to resort to calling me names? She does it when her husband isn't around or out of earshot and he's an arsehole for pretending he doesn't know. Literally, we've done nothing wrong. We had work done and used our own drive for it. Not her business. we ignore her and her bullying, yet she still does things like that.
For now I'm not naming her, but I shall.
Ok. So cut to today. It's hot. She's out there watering her garden. I was in our garden and videoing flowers and whatnot for a vlog, fully expecting her to spray the hose over to ours as she's done before. She didn't do that. I thought 'bet she's going to clank that stupid wind chime. She's put up a wind chime close to us and whenever she thinks or knows someone is in the garden she'll clank it loudly. So I stealthily put my phone in that direction. But no. she didn't do that. Instead she suddenly climbed up her fence to peer over into our garden, muttering in what sounding like tongues as she did so. She dropped down, then jumped up and did it again. We were so close yet she didn't even see me.
I got a blurry video, but I caught it. And I've uploaded it to you tube as a short. It's private, but it's safe.
It has freaked me out. It is not normal behaviour and I've gone from feeling irritated by this woman to being seriously alarmed.
I've already told my mum that if any time I'm found dead in my drive way to tell the police about this woman, but she thought I was joking. I wasn't then, and I'm not now. This woman has issues. Serious issues. Over a year has passed and she's still bullying, victimising, intimidating, and acting in a very deranged manner for literally NO REASON WHATSOEVER. I write this now to say that if at any time anything bad happens to me or my family, please remember what I've written here now and previously. Usually I keep blog posts light and happy but I can't do that right now. This woman is not right and her behaviour is scary.
It is time to bring in the law, we've tried so hard to not get that far. The point of this post is just to have it as a record. I'm at the point where I'm worried for our wellbeing at the hands of this lunatic. A husband who makes excuses and enables and doesn't want to have to deal with it. Had we been bad neighbours I wouldn't be bothered, but we have been really good to these two. Not going into details but it seems to me the nicer and kinder you are, the more badly you are treated.