Love thy neighbour.

Love thy neighbour.

Moving house is fraught with all kinds of stressful stages. First there is the neighbourhood, then the location within the neighbourhood, and then finally the house within the neighbourhood, but the one thing we never consider is the actual neighbours themselves. And herein lies the story.

We recently moved into a rather posh yet congested area located on the slopes of Table Mountain overlooking the city of Cape Town. The perfect location with a spectacular view, but that’s where it ends. The house on our left is a rental which was initially occupied by a rather severe looking spinster who from day one would write us little notes which were left in our letter box…
Dear Sir,
Kindly do not leave your trash bin out over night as it attracts vagrants.
Dear Sir,
Would you please not open and close your garage door late at night as the sound scares my dog.
Dear Sir,
I would appreciate it if you did not fertilize your lawn, as the smell is totally unacceptable.
Dear Sir,
I don’t know if you are aware of this, but when I stand at my garage window I can see your laundry line. Kindly have a wall built or move it to the other side of your house.
Signed…..Your Neighbour,
Miss J. Wallace.
And all of this within the first week of us moving in. Well I’d hardly had time to compose my reply, when the very next Monday morning I noticed the removal company arrive and that was the last we ever heard from her.

Luck was on our side, or so I thought, because two days later a small pick-up truck, laden to the skies, heralded the arrival of our new neighbours, who proudly introduced themselves as Margie and Leon and their rather demented-looking son called Melvin plus…. the three scruffy-looking bull mastiffs named Spanner, Spider and Satan. And yes…all hell was about to descend on us.

These spoilt mongrels had obviously grown up on some farm and were used to wide open spaces and barking at anything that moved within a 10km radius, which meant that every time I watered the garden or so much as walked anywhere near the fence they would go absolutely ballistic. Not just barking but snarling and snorting as if someone had just kicked them in the balls. And worse still were the sounds they made when their loving owners came home from work – a sort of muted hysteria that would have frightened a pack of hyenas off their kill. It took months of numerous phone calls and finally a petition signed by all the neighbours to force these dog-lovers to lock their over-protective hounds from hell indoors whenever they were not home.

Peace at last I thought, but no ways…the demented son Melvin then took it upon himself to extract revenge. To this end I would spot him creeping around the garden in the dead of night dressed in a black ninja costume clutching a splat ball gun with which he would shoot multi-coloured paint balls at all the neighbours’ walls. How I would love to splat his balls.

And so having exorcised those demons I can now move on to the neighbours in front of us who once we had moved in decided to build a swimming pool and sauna right up against the boundary wall dividing our properties, complete with pool-heating system and pump that together set up such a din that I thought I was suffering from a severe case of tinnitus. Having my music recording studio no more than five meters from the source resulted in all my recordings sounding as if they had been recorded in a bee hive. Add to this the sound of people diving into the pool and generally enjoying themselves, and my songs sounded like the Beach Boys humming in B flat.

Now you don’t think a sauna could spell much trouble until you imagine the sounds people make when jumping back into the pool after ten minutes in the hot house. Fortunately it took only one polite phone call to remedy this complaint as the eldest son, also a musician, immediately identified with my concerns. They subsequently put a silencer and housing on their pool equipment, and today we are only left with the eyesore of naked bums running to and from the sauna, although I must admit some of them are no eyesore at all.
And then we had the German brain surgeon on our right. The one who wanted to take us to court for having a skylight, which if we stood on a ladder, would allow us to see him skinny-dipping in his pool, and when I pointed out to him that he had a normal window overlooking his neighbour’s pool he told me that I should mind my own business, and asked me to leave.

The funny thing was that he already had the house up for sale, and within a month we had new neighbours. Good riddance to him or so I thought, because when the new neighbours moved in they realized my greatest nightmare: a young, enthusiastic, outdoorsy couple with two young daughters and two Labrador puppies. Why me Lord?

The animated dad started by building the girls a tree house that looked straight into our bathroom. Then a trampoline followed, right under our bedroom window. Next, the dog kennels straight below our guest bedroom. And don’t forget the swimming pool, and the level of noise emanating from young children, notorious for screaming at the tops of their voices whenever they come into contact with water.

Now since both parents work away from home all day, the mother has alleviated her guilt by inviting every other child at the kids’ school to come and swim at any time they like. Well, this invitation has certainly been taken up, as not a day goes by in the summer without children being dropped off by busy moms, at all hours of the day, to make use of this public swimming pool and crèche. And not only kids are dropped off, but their dogs as well. The sound is deafening – screaming children, barking dogs, and a fair amount of crying. God, please bring on winter.

So, let this be a fair warning to all of you who are about to move house. Don’t worry about location, location, location. Worry about neighbours, neighbours, neighbours.