Part I of the Neighbour Who Hates Us
Part II of the Neighbour Who Hates Us
It may surprise you to learn that I have a pathological need to be liked. Obviously, that ship had sailed with NWHU but part of what bothered me about her boom boxing was that other people in the neighbourhood might think that not ONLY were we the source of the loud construction noises (on weekdays only and never after 5pm but still), but we were also shitbags who like to blast our terrible music.
It seemed weird to go door-to-door and say "You know that super loud music that blasts from this general area intermittently on evenings and weekends? That's...not us. It's our neighbour, who is angry we're building a pool in our yard."
The car alarm thing, however, felt like more of an opening to tattle. After the first weekend, I planned to put together a noise complaint to send the city and, while I didn't go door-to-door, I did stop and talk to any neighbours I ran into while I was out walking Pumbaa. I told them who the source of the car alarm (and music) was and asked if I could include their addresses in my complaint.
This experience was very comforting, because everyone I spoke to was OUTRAGED on our behalf and most of them already disliked NWHU for various reasons.
Our nice neighbours on the other side were ready to go knock on her door but I told them they didn't want to get sucked into her vortex of fuckery.
The neighbours on the other side of NWHU rolled their eyes and were also shocked to learn that NWHU was the same woman who the whole neighbourhood hears screaming for her cat every night. (Sidenote about these neighbours, they are awesome and we have them over for boardgames sometimes! So thanks, NWHU.)
Then NWHU took a three-week break from her audio assault. Maybe someone else complained to her and she had a moment of sanity? Who can say?
I put a hold on my complaint-to-the-city plans. Because frankly, I wanted to just get the fucking pool done and when someone is acting this unhinged, you don't want to provoke them further. At the time, it was just music and the occasional car alarm but who fucking knows what else she would do?
I had visions of her lying down in front of the water truck so that we couldn't fill the pool; or throwing something over the fence to damage the pool equipment. We already had security cameras in the back but we adjusted them to keep an eye on the fence line, just in case.
At the end of June, she fired up the boom box again, but things got extra fun at the beginning of July. One afternoon, our very gregarious and peace-loving hardscaper, Tyma, happened to be working on the "close to NWHU" edge of the upper patio and NWHU happened to come outside.
He made some comment about "we'll have to be good neighbours because we can now shake hands over this part of the fence" (no thanks!) and she went OFF on him about how we were horrible fucking neighbours and that she has no more fucking privacy and we were making a dusty mess, among other things apparently, I wasn't there and heard this second-hand from the stunned work crew.
I was like "Tyma, why did you engage? Don't engage!" but he's so nice and just wanted to fix things. So the next day, he went over and kindly offered to pressure wash her house and patio for free when the job was done.
This was a mistake.
She started screaming at him about how we weren't even allowed to have a pool, that it's against regulations. But she also apparently said horrible shit about us and his crew which he refused to repeat to me after the fact. Whatever she said to him made him so furious that he withdrew the offer, obviously, and told her that she wasn't a good person (this is a euphemism, I don't know the actual thing he said.)
Immediately after this incident, around 4:30pm, she set off her car alarm again, while peering through our fence at the front. Then set it off again at 4:37pm. Then again at 4:55pm. Then again at 5:01pm. Then she blasted her boom box from 5:30pm to 5:45pm. Then the car alarm again. Then her son came home and she stopped being bananas...until 12:15am, when she set off the car alarm again. Then the next morning (a Saturday), she boom-boxed from 7:25am until 8am, then a brief burst of car alarms. Then the boom box again later in the afternoon for about an hour.
All the other neighbours were texting me WTF and it was lovely neighbourhood-solidarity-building weekend. How delightful to have company in our disgruntlement. We both took a lot of pot gummies.
I guess NWHU's exhausting audio revenge schedule eventually caught up with her, so she took a break and turned instead to the internet, where she proceeded to leave 1-star Google reviews for both our pool contractors (who she'd never actually met or talked to) and our hardscaper.
This was a big deal, because both these folks have solid 5 star ratings on Google. Our pool contractor Lopo was in our yard when he got the call from his wife (and business partner) Mepo. I heard him say over the phone "1-star? Who is [Actual name of NWHU]?" and I was OMG THAT'S NWHU!! And he was like "What? What did *I* do??" HAHAHAHAHA
Fortunately, since NWHU wasn't an actual client, both Tyma and Lopo were able to get both reviews removed from the Googs but this swipe at their businesses made me even more furious than I thought possible.
I had a lot of revenge fantasies, you guys.
I am not going to write them down here, in case something happens to her at some point, I watch a lot of crime shows, but watch the video from my last post again and use your imagination.
Still. We was determined to keep a lid on our righteous fury until this happened:
The contractors were gone. The pool was filled. The landscaping was adorable. And we were fatly floating around with our beaver.
Once the work was completed, we heard nothing from NWHU for about 2 weeks. I wondered if, now that the work was done and we weren't having wild pool parties every night and the pool equipment wasn't loud, NWHU would say to herself "Oh, what a silly goose I have been. This IS fine." and leave us the fuck alone.
That dream died the night of August 14, 2023.
It was a Monday evening and it was a heat wave. We had invited our nice neighbours Cach (I take care of her chickens every summer!), her husband Scch and Scch's mom Noch (who's in her 80s and has dementia) over for a swim and a BBQ. They came over around 5pm and literally 5 minutes after they arrived, NWHU decided it was time to ruin the party.
She turned the boom box on so loud that the Bollywood music issuing from it was distorted.
Then she got her ladder and climbed up into her plum tree to harvest some plums, making sure most of her upper body was over the fence into our yard.
We and our guests all tried to carry on a conversation but we basically all had this look:
except for Noch, who's also pretty deaf, so she just savoured her red wine and enjoyed the vibes.
Once she'd gotten all her plums, NWHU started mowing her yard. Not the whole yard - just the part near our shared fence. This was extra hilarious, because I happened to know that her son had already mowed the lawn the day before.
Once she was done mowing, NWHU went inside, but left the radio on, now blaring a talk radio segment.
We all got out of the pool and the neighbours went home to change and grab their BBQ fixings. When they came back, the radio was still blaring. At this point, it had been two hours. So we did what white people do best:
We called the police.
(The non-emergency line, obviously.)
We had already had a convo with Central Saanich PD earlier in the summer, just to find out what recourse we had if NWHU escalated, so we already had a handy case number. And the great thing about living in a rural area is that the police actually show up pretty fast for a noise complaint.
I went out to meet the cruiser and was momentarily struck dumb by the emergence of Constable Nick, who looked like he was straight out of a Hallmark romance. Imagine this guy in a patrol uniform.
As soon as Constable Nick got out of the car, he was like "Whoa. That's loud."
I brought him around the back and introduced him to Katr and the neighbours. He took a look around the table at our middle-aged asses and tipsy, sweet, 80 year old Noch and said drily, "This looks like a rager."
We gave him the background on NWHU. Her truck was still in the driveway, so I told him I ASSUMED she was home (although her son's car was gone, so it was possible she was out). He said "Be right back."
Constable Nick went next door. He rang the bell and knocked. Nothing.
He went around to the back. NWHU has stairs that lead from the ground up to her second floor balcony, so he went up there and knocked on the back door. Nothing.
And then...Constable Nick turned off the boom box.
I will not lie to you. It was one of the greatest moments of my adult life.
A few minutes later, Constable Nick came back. He told us that he'd left a note on NWHUs' door, explaining what had happened (so she wouldn't think we'd been on her property) and told her to call him if she had any questions. He also gave us his card and said that if she starts it up again, he was on duty until 3am. Swoon.
Relieved and elated, we proceeded to enjoy the rest of the evening and just before our nice neighbours left, Katr got a call from Constable Nick.
He said that NWHU had called him and said [insert innocent high-pitched British voice] "Oh my stars, I was just out doing some yard work, listening to my favourite music, and then I had to go buy some camping supplies and silly me, I must have left the radio on!"
He said to her "Well, of course it's totally fine to listen to music while you're doing yard work. But if you are regularly playing your music extra loud in order to harass your neighbours...that's called "mischief". And you can be arrested."
Apparently she got real quiet and said "Well, that's not what's happening," and he said "Great! Have a good night."
And that, folks, was the last we heard from NWHU.
Thank you for going on this journey with me, everyone. Stay tuned for a brief epilogue to this story next time on "stories from last year that I'm just getting around to blogging now."
One more 50x50 Update
French podcasts listened to: 30
French articles read: 28
Episodes of French TV watched: 42
French lessons: 40
Blog posts: 13 hahaha definitely should have done a Part 4, this one should count as 2 posts, right?
Blog posts: 14
