Neighbours

“Neighbours, everybody needs good neighbours,” sang some Antipodean warbler over the opening credits of the soap opera of the same name.

Some of my neighbours are actually quite nice people. I’ve spent a great deal of time making small talk with them without actually wanting to tell them to fuck off.

The man who lives next door though is a turdlord of the highest order.

He’s the kind of man everybody just wants to punch in the face.

I stopped attempting to be nice some time ago after I cheerily said “good morning” to him and he replied with a Neanderthal grunt.

Maybe he was just having a bad day?

Every day is a bad day for him.

Once I was out in the garden and he came out of his house and barked: “You need to cut those bushes back. They’re hanging over my side.” He then disappeared back inside before I could give him any kind of clever response.

As if that was annoying enough, he’s also the kind of Yorkshireman who pronounces over as “ovver”.

Another time he was exasperated by the parking of some other neighbours. “People round here can’t park properly,” he growled as I walked past.

To annoy him, I did my best confused face and replied: “What are you talking about? There’s loads of space next to your car, you daft sod.”

I walked away, feeling smug, as his face reddened and I imagined a cartoonesque whistling kettle noise and steam coming out of his ears.

He regularly parks and blocks in visitors to our house. This leads to me banging heavily on his door and telling him simply “move your car” when he answers. I use a tone without a hint of politeness which implies “I hate you and hope you die a very painful death, possibly involving a combine harvester and your testicles,” but he’s not clever enough to notice that.

He regularly ruins the tranquility of sitting outside by yelling at his young daughter, who seemingly has her father’s intelligence and can’t seem to do anything right. When I’ve just got home, I don’t need to hear him bellowing “DON’T DO THAT” every fifteen seconds until the girl starts to cry while I eat my tea.

Even sitting in the bath has been ruined by the bastard. I can hear him shouting while I’m having a soak and it has been tempting on more than one occasion to just drown myself in an attempt to avoid his caveman-like voice.

Yesterday, as if to continue to be annoying whilst being at work, he had his towels hung on his washing line. How can that annoy anyone? Simple. The colour of the aforementioned towels was sort of like dirty mustard and it was as damaging to the eyes as staring at the sun. If the sun was made of shit.

His house is currently for sale and I find myself torn. Part of me wants him to sell it quickly and bugger off and part of me hopes that potential buyers are put off by the fact that he’s such an immensely unlikeable twunt.

On a completely unrelated note: does anybody know where I can buy a cheap combine harvester?