Tuesday 16 March 2021
Women will never be free of abuse while men are in power
Friday 22 January 2021
My neighbour is stressing me out - Persnickety Neighbours Telford
25 Hartshill Avenue, Oakengates, Telford
So my neighbours (25 Hartshill Avenue, Oakengates, Telford) are stressing me out again and I am allowing them. I thought if I write it all down I might feel better. Let me explain. When I first moved into this property about 15 years ago, there was a couple on my joined side ( its a semi detached ) and the other side there was a single mum like myself. Everything was fine and dandy. As I am joined to one house this couple are really the only folk I see. They were and always have been fine and over the years we have got more friendly as to be expected. I can't remember when, but a few years after moving in the other side single mum got a new fella.
Initially he is quite scary to look at as he has tats on his head and face. He didn't work and well he really fell on his feet moving in with her. Anyway regardless, each to their own. Not my cup of tea but I was sort of happy for her as heard she was a widow. He is a biker and has a huge quad bike thing that makes a hell of a racket which he has tinkered with for years. I don't think he worked for years, but apparently he is a school caretaker now. Being an old biker myself I can kind of put up with it. But I work from home and have for over 11 years so when he is revving this beast outside it can be frustrating. But I have never said a word as well I am very easy going. Plus after seeing the couple out and about I found them not very social or approachable so that was that, not a problem.
In 2013, having worked from my dining from since 09 I rebuilt my clay room which I called it which was the conservatory / side room which is attached to the side of my house which joins the (non joined house neighbours) :
The old one was falling apart and it was damp, so this was just upgrading what was already there. It houses my kiln. It was now fit for purpose so I could move my business into there which I did. I then went about creating a kitchen. There is another post about that here if your interested. I have some luck! You can see on the picture how nice the job was.
Then out of the blue I get a letter from the council telling me that my dog barking is a nuisance! WTF was my first reaction. I had a trained border collie that was better behaved that ANY child. As I was worried who I had upset I went knocking them all. Turns out it was the scary tat man neighbour as I call him. Every other neighbour was as in as much shock as me for getting that letter.
I asked him why he didn't speak to me before going to council. He didn't know why and was very sheepish and childlike. It was a bit like ner ner ner ner ner type stuff. Straight away I thought what a dick. I am very social and approachable so I couldn't understand why he did it, and he couldn't explain either. He was just very twatty about it. I explained how I would play a game with the dog. I would pretend to throw something down the garden and she would go off running and barking. I didn't do it that often. By this stage I was running two businesses from home which would be impossible if the dog was a barking nuisance. Plus all the neighbours agreed he was just being a twat.
The chat with him left me fuming and I called him a pussy and left. He was very strange. I would ask him a question and he would just stare and smile. Its like he lost the ability to talk. He must have lied to the council as surely they are not allowed to send letters unless he had tried and failed to resolve with me. But I didn't know he had a problem.
Ever since the dog incident I have been weary of him. I have been looking to move and been looking for years now. For other reasons, not just cause of not getting on with him. In 2017 I bought a motorbike and well it seemed to go down well with that neigbour as he became more social and would smile and talk. Just normal neighbour stuff. So I thought great, live and let live we got over our hickup, neighborly again. I was then offered a workshop down the local museum I work at and I thought yay, get me out of here. I haven't enjoyed working in that room since the fall out. But boom 2020 Covid hell...
Also during the past 5 years my joined 'nice' neighbours have heard about me wanting to move and it frightens them. They are worried who might move in. I have one side saying don't move and the other side I again now not getting on with...
So covid hits, my artist in residence on hold. Dog died, life is shit. I mention to nice neighbours about stuff and she said I have the space why not build a workshop. This got me thinking and it was a no brainer. So last year I spent loads of money on building a super new garden room which I should be moving into in a few weeks.
There was a lot of prep work needed as the back on my garden was very overgrown and trees falling over. My joined neighbour agreed to help. Around the same time the tat man knocked my office and told me he was extending his workshop (which is attached to my current one in pic above) and that he is putting a new roof on it and my guttering will be down for a bit. He said about putting a window and pointed where. I said I didn't need light as never sit out the front and anyway I am moving as I am building a new workshop at the back, which they could see. I then showed him my art work and we chatted normally. I was more excited about my workshop build than what he was doing.
A couple of weeks later a window appeared which I thought odd. Why put a window when I said I didn't need light? Other neighbours told me he needed planning and shouldn't put a window looking down on another neighbour. Frosted glass has to be used, but he needs my consent. Everyone thought it was odd as even with that window, unless he opens his workshop up fully, no light will get through to that window anyway.
So I spoke to them and said I am not happy could they brick it up. For a while it looked like they were going to fill it in but now a frosted window is there:
Since he started his extension, I have built a 20 x 16 ft garden room all finished but windows and he still hasn't finished his roof. It looks terrible and I told her. Plus as the drain pipe is hanging off I have to listen to drip drip drip... 8 months now I think. So annoying. I have now moved into my kitchen as I feel even less comfortable working in there. All work has stopped.
She came round shouting her mouth off. Going on about living here 26 years. So what? I've been here 15. I MYSELF have worked very hard to buy my house unlike her.
Covid Project - Building a Studio in my Garden 2020
So this has been a year we will all remember. For me it was supposed to be the year of change in that I became an artist in residence at Coalport China Museum. Having worked from home for 11 years in SEO I was ready to change things around and become a full time artist or at least 80% of my time was going to be on my art. Two floods and then Covid-19 in the Spring meant that the museum has been shut all year. Coalport has been my happy place for many years and one of the reasons I have stayed in the area. It won't be opening anytime soon. So that was sad.
What I have found hard this year is that it feels like my human rights have been taken away. To keep me sane (and this is good advice for anyone planning to stay working from home), you have to make sure you get out and have a social life away from home. I used to play badminton twice a week with two different groups of people, that with my friends and family and trips away kept me sane. I don't like the gym or pubs really, so I have felt frustrated with the restrictions.
Loosing my old border collie in August was the last straw. She had been ill all year, she was 15, so when the inevitable happened and I couldn't go travelling (which was also my plan for this year) I decided to put all my focus on building a workshop studio in my back garden. I will then be able to run classes and do all the stuff I planned to do down Coalport. As for the public viewing, there of course is YouTube so the plan is to get busier on there. I still want a space down the museum but at least when this is built I wont be able to turn down the bigger jobs which Coalport helped materialize. I got a job to make a number of large wall flowers for the store Macy's in USA. With no space here and the need of a larger kiln it was thanks to Coalport I could take the job. Soon I will have a larger kiln and plenty of space.
I have a good 100ft plus garden so there was plenty of room:
Clearing behind my garden
This was my garden back in August 2020, dog just died, sad time, time to get busy:
I knew I had to sort out the mess behind my garden as the land was half way up my back fence. Years of rubbish being chucked over (not me) and trees growing meant anyone could step onto my roof so it had to be cleared.
So phase one was to clear this and create a base. I spoke to my neighbor and he agreed to help. I went away for a week down to Folkestone and he got busy from his side. It was a good couple of weeks of work and it involved taking down some dangerously growing trees.
I bought a gazebo to store all my shed stuff. The shed sold very quickly on Facebook Marketplace.
What we found once we got excavating is that my old boundary posts were buried. A tree was growing within the boundaries so we think the previous owner brought the fence forward rather than deal with the tree. This is the tree root: There was soil right up to the back of my then boundary:
This is a video of the base work up until the concrete pour:
This split pictures shows just two weeks apart. The frame went up very quickly: