My neighbour has complained because we do not have net curtains on our dining room window and it embarrasses her to walk past on the way to her house because she has to see us eating. Shouldn’t she just look the other way?
Charles Walker, Malvern
Well, of course she should. And I don’t suppose that waving a cheerful spoon and fork at her as she passes will cure her embarrassment. But net curtains are a Charlie suburban fetish in ghastly bad taste. It is bad manners of your neighbour even to notice you in your home, and worse to complain about it. But I see no profit in telling her so. She sounds a prodnose snob. I shouldn’t join in a discussion of the topic. Be friendly. On no account buy net curtains.
How do you get to know people when you have moved to a new area? For example, at my son’s soccer game I’ve approached a couple of parents with mild conversation and after a brief comment they turn round to ignore me. I’m not a scary person, I promise.
Name and address withheld
Persevere being your gregarious and friendly self. The Brits are reserved and antisocial creatures. At least, some of them are. They say that it takes four generations before the locals in a district such as Morningside or Lavenham accept incomers as natives. Carry on going to your son’s footy games. If they need referees or tea-makers or distributors of crisps and sweets to small children, volunteer. Take part in local activities, especially at your son’s school. Do not expect instant bezzies (best friends). Be prepared for traditional English coldness and hostility. You will find that there are also warm and friendly people in your new home. At least I hope that you will. Resolve to treat newcomers with friendship when you have been accepted as a local.
Two neighbours like to sit out on their separate but connected condo balconies enjoying the Florida views. However, one is a chain-smoker and the other hates cigarette smoke and is asthmatic. What can the person who does not smoke do to stop the smoke from invading his private domain?
Name and address withheld
Gas mask? Screens? Cyclist’s nose mask? A fan to blow the smoke away from the non-smoker’s balcony? Can you grow bonsai leylandii in a pot? Good fences make good neighbours. Best to discuss the matter in a neighbourly way, explaining that your chum has asthma, and can’t stand smoke. The ruling passion in mankind is not as Freudian Viennese as is claimed. It is rather a gregarious instinct to keep together by minding each other’s business. Grex rather than sex.
I live in a small block of (six) flats. The entrance hall and stairs are due for redecoration. At present they are painted and papered in a dreary mixture of greens, chosen by the landlord’s wife, I understand. I should like to have something more cheerful this time. But I do not want to appear bossy. How can I arrange this without upsetting my neighbours or our landlord?
M. G., London W11
With tact, generosity and goodwill. Nothing can cause more uproar and ill will than arguments among tenants over the decoration of their common parts. Experto crede. The landlord will be only too pleased (probably) to have these momentous decisions taken off his (or his wife’s) hands. He will want the redecoration kept within budget. And so will your neighbours.
You sound officer-like material. I should have the neighbours in for a redecoration meeting, possibly over tea or a glass of wine. Have some suggestions and samples to show them. Be prepared for dogmatic opinions, obstruction and unneighbourliness. The common parts concern all of you. It would be a miracle if all your neighbours share your opinions about interior decoration, or anything else. So you have to listen to them, shepherd them in the direction you want them to go, like a good sheepdog, and arrive at the highest common factor as well as the lowest common denominator, and be prepared not to get your own way in everything.
I recently held a garage give-away of surplus items. I invited two families to help themselves at a prearranged time. Family A arrived at my house thirty minutes before the prearranged time, and, despite my efforts to delay them, made their way resolutely ahead of family B, who arrived at the prearranged time. Family B were dismayed to see many items already nestling in family A’s car boots. What should my future attitude be, since I work with the husbands of both families?
Eve Churchill, Ivybridge, Devon
You are a fair-minded as well as a generous neighbour. You could:
- Next time invite family B forty minutes before family A, to give them a flying start at the broken radios and dead toasters.
- Say to greedy and anticipatory family A: ‘Have some coffee (cider) and Devon shortbread, while we wait for family B to arrive, so that we can all start from a level garage floor.’
- Just don’t invite family A next time. But that would be to repay grasping greed with a rebuff. Why bother? If they were going to learn unselfishness, they would have done so by now.
My children know that they are not allowed to accept food from strangers but what can you do about next-door neighbours? The lady next door is always giving them biscuits and sweets. Yesterday my son came in five minutes before Sunday lunch munching on a chocolate croissant. The children have been told to decline, but obviously the temptation is too great. How can I dissuade her from stuffing them?
Name and address withheld
Ask her in a friendly way please not to feed your children. Preferably over neighbourly coffee. Not indignantly or self-righteously. She is only trying to be kind, in a daft way. Let us not become fanatics over the diet of our children. The Incas built a great civilisation on eating chocolate. I am not sure where they stood on croissants. Tell your infants to bring any treats the neighbour gives them to eat after they have finished their lunchtime raw carrots. It is more important for them to grow up happy, with good neighbours, than galley slaves to dietary correctitude.
I am sharing a flat with one flatmate – a pleasant chap except that his room smells of BO. When he opens his bedroom door the smell is suffocating. He is totally oblivious to this and even wedges his door open at times. Could you suggest a tactful way of putting the issue to him?
Name and address withheld
‘Even your best friends won’t tell you’ was a famous advertisement for Listerine mouthwash. We all have different personal smells (idiostinks?) and different tolerance of alien smells. Ask any dog. The Japanese, who have very little body hair, find it unpleasant to travel in crowded UK transport and lifts. Sharing a flat means putting up, within reason, with the different habits and smells of one’s flatmate. You could raise the matter, but I should do so tactfully and humorously, if poss. If you really cannot stand the smell, you must find either another flatmate or another flat.
My neighbour fills his wheelie bin to overflowing, so much so that it is beginning to split. He now puts his surplus into my bin when it has been wheeled out for collection. How do I tactfully suggest that I do not want my bin to be overloaded with his rubbish?
B. T., Leeds
With caution. With tact. With delicacy. With neighbourly amity. It is bad manners of your neighbour to trespass into your wheelie bin without asking. But people have different standards, different manners, different tribal customs. It is not worth creating Litter Rage. Falling out with a neighbour is a far greater inconvenience than trouble over wheelie bins. We must bite our lips and put up with the selfishness and bad behaviour of our neighbours. For, who knows? They may be putting up with our inconsiderateness. Well, at any rate, mine. If a neighbour’s litter-bugging gets seriously up your nose, you could ask him, amiably, not furiously, to desist. But personally I wouldn’t bother.
I live in an apartment building where one of the neighbours has the same surname as me. We frequently find our post mixed. Recently my neighbour put an envelope, clearly labelled confidential, which contained my salary details, at my door (opened!) with a note saying that she had been mistaken because she was not wearing her glasses, but assured me that she didn’t look at the contents. This is the first time that this has happened, but my parents-in-law are pushing me to take action against her. I think they are overreacting. What’s your opinion?
Hank Lourdes, Germany
I do not see what possible good can come from pursuing the matter. All that you would do would make an enemy of your neighbour with the same surname as you. Think the best of your neighbour. Believe that she opened your payslip by accident. In the long eye of history, what does it matter? Get on with life. On this occasion, in the nicest possible way, ignore the daft (and mischievous) advice of your parents-in-law.
I have recently begun renting a flat next door to a pub. A fantastic arrangement, I thought, if potentially injurious to my wallet. I have since discovered that the pub is in the habit of having ‘lock-ins’ featuring drunken shouting that persists into the small hours. Is there any way I could let them know that the lack of sleep is eroding my sanity?
Michael Hopkin, London
Ear muffs? Nightcap? Make friends with landlord fast? I fear that the downside of living next door to a pub is the night noise. But your adjacent landlord, if he is any good, will want to be on good terms with his neighbours, and to keep his licence. But you have made your bed and must lie on it, as comfortably as you can.
We are told ‘Love thy neighbour’, which is all well and good. But ours don’t speak to us all year, then send a Christmas card ‘with love’. We send one back without the appendage. But is that any less hypocritical? What would you do?
R. A. Rawlings, Bristol
Christmas is a time for hypocrisy, and Christmas cards are hypocrisy’s cherubs. We all need all the ‘love’ we can get. In our excessively sentimental age, to withhold a ‘with love’ might seem to some fools as harsh as calling them by their surnames. I should conform to the friendly usage of your neighbours. But try to exchange neighbourly words and entertainment with them this year.
We have moved into a new neighbourhood, and my wife has become friends with the woman next door. They recently invited us to their house for dinner. However, the evening was a strain. We have nothing in common with them, and they are possibly the most boring people I have ever met. My wife now insists that we ‘invite them back’. I know this is the done thing, but we didn’t ask to be invited to theirs, did we?
Name and address withheld
Archons of Athens! Boring neighbours have been one of the little disturbances of life since the time of Socrates. You are under a mild social obligation to return the hospitality. It is ungenerous to take and not to give. But your wife is a friend of her next door. And perhaps you are being a bit intolerant. Nobody is completely boring. Perhaps you could dilute the boredom of the return match by inviting them along with some of your liveliest and raciest friends. And it is important to cultivate good relations with neighbours.
I am an elderly gentleman living in a ground-floor flat. In the flat above is a similar gentleman. Unfortunately, when he attends to his lavatory, every detail and sound are clearly heard below. I find this irritating – particularly when being awoken in the early hours. With visitors, this results in embarrassing giggles or silence. Should I mention it to him, and if so how?
Joe F., Coventry
Well, you could mention it. But I should do so gently, addressing a common problem, not grumpily or accusingly. City living in close proximity requires mutual tolerance of our neighbours’ propinquity or adjacency. Your problem is common. We all have to relieve ourselves regularly, the elderly more often than the young. Your neighbour might consider using a chamber pot for night excursions. Make a friend of him.
What is the best way to deal with a neighbour who constantly wants to borrow things?
Name and address withheld
Calm down. Pacify your nerves. Resign yourself to the universal truth that some neighbours are useless providers. Try to think of it as a (two-edged) compliment that your neighbour always assumes that you are a prudent housekeeper, who can be counted on to have a bit of olive oil/salt/milk to spare. Generosity is a virtue. Meticulous petty accountancy can be a vice.
Long-lost neighbours came to visit. We wined and dined them for a weekend, entertained them and chatted for ever about the old days. They had arrived empty-handed, but the husband came back a few days later to thank us with a small pot of homemade jam. Should I have called him a cheapskate to his face, or should I have apologised for the thick skin of green mould that had grown on the jam in the six years since I had made and given it to them?
Valerie Moyses, Banbury, Oxon
Never look a gift horse in the mouth. Nor even a gift jam. I agree that your former neighbours showed less than lavish guest/host/neighbour gift reciprocity. But, of course, you should not have called them cheapskates. Better to get a wry smile out of the comedy of life, as you have.
I live next door to a couple who have a very tempestuous relationship and constantly seem to be arguing. Their shouting is so loud it has become a real intrusion – I can even hear it above the television. I am a little embarrassed to ask them to stop. What should I do?
M. L., Enfield
Heavenly Hera! I cannot imagine the way in which I would address my neighbours with a request that they stop fighting so noisily. I cringe at the prospect. I hope that I am on friendly enough terms with my neighbours that I would be able to allude to the propinquity of family noise by indirections, and jokily. But tread softly, for we tread on delicate relationships. Some people are naturally noisier than others. The quieter ones among us have to put up with it, and wonder at the rich diversity of human nature.
My neighbour downstairs complains every time I play music and has also complained that my TV is too loud. The other night she thumped on my floor with a broom handle (I assume) simply because I was walking across my room with my shoes on. She is driving me mad. What can I do?
D. H., Manchester
Play your music less loudly? And your TV? Take off your shoes? We have different tolerances of noise. Modern society tolerates very loud music everywhere, even while driving with the windows open. It is driving us deaf. It is not the eternal silence of outer space that is terrifying, but the possibility that it may be an eternal uproar of rap and pop. Whatever happens we must not fall into Neighbour Rage. If you are to have any peace, you must mend fences. You might even pluck up the courage to tell her that you are sorry and are trying to make less noise. At any rate, the good neighbour goes an extra step out of his/her way not to offend those next door.
New neighbours, with more money than manners, have taken a friendly welcome as an excuse to knock on the door at all hours, cocktail and smoke in hand, welcoming themselves in for a chat. What to do?
R. Mimmson, Atlanta, US
Discourage undue familiarity by indirections, cunning and tact. By not so much as a frown or a wince do you want to convey the impression of superiority, or that you think their necks are red. You may have to make excuses: ‘How lovely to see you, George and Laura. We are a bit busy tonight, writing letters/paying bills/learning Sanskrit/meditating.’
How would you deal with a highly irascible and territorially challenged neighbour who is in the habit of dumping his garden waste along the public footpath running between our two houses?
Name and address withheld
With extreme caution and sweet humour. I doubt whether I should try to ‘deal with’ him. That may only provoke the brute. Would confronting him shock him into better behaviour? I doubt it. I should sigh and take a little trouble to clear up his mess. Does this sound saintly or wimpish?
How does one deal with a chap who has no idea of basic hygiene and insists in inflicting squalor on his housemates? He refuses to see the misery this causes others. Eviction is not an option.
E. Parkinson, Woodbridge
Some are born squalid. Some achieve squalor. And others have squalor thrust upon them. You are in the last group. Bad luck. We all have different standards of hygiene. If eviction is not on the table (presumably still covered with yesterday’s dirty plates), all that you can do is sigh, and tidy up behind him. And hope to educate him by your good example and unselfish good nature. It remains that we tidy up behind what we cannot repel, that we palliate what we cannot cure.
I live in a terraced house in London, cheek by jowl with my neighbours, one of whom is well disposed and the other irritable. My two elder children and I are just beginning to learn the piano. What is the etiket of piano practice? Should I write and apologise to the neighbours in advance, or attempt to placate the irritable one with whisky?
Anonymissus, London SW1
How thoughtful! I should alert your neighbours that you are about to start piano practice. You should lay down disciplined hours, none of them antisocial. Whisky has charms to soothe the savage neighbour, maybe. But you cannot allow yourself to be bullied – it is your house.
I have just bid farewell to my uncle and his dear wife who stayed with me in my single man’s abode for a delightful few nights on their holiday from Australia. They have gone on to rest for a couple of days in the country before returning on a flight home soon-ish. My dilemma is in finding a pair of ladies’ drawers apparently drying as laundry on the bedroom radiator and am unsure of how to correctly respond. My options appear to be ‘bag, bin and silence’ or ‘hoohah, letter, envelope and the post office’. I suspect that I know the answer but my step-aunt, being so delightfully Australian and possibly lacking my queasiness, might appreciate a clue as to ‘all’s all right with the pants, mate’.
Keith Rayment, Anonywhere
Let us not be shy about step-aunt’s knickers. She is grown-up and Australian. They are less hung-up about underclothes in Oz than we are. Pack them up, post them to Australia, with a loving and humorous card. The humour depends on your relationship with uncle and aunt. But the relationship sounds affectionate not stuffy.