Everybody needs good neighbours, according to Barry Crocker and he ain’t lying. Unfortunately, when you buy a new home you don’t know if you’re moving next door to the Rafters or the Milats. In recent, but already forgotten, times of real-estate boom, you could barely check if the house had a toilet, let alone if your hi-de-ho neighbour was actually John Wayne Gacy, before you made an offer or got trampled by overexcited moguls-to-be.
The different homes in which I’ve lived since leaving the well feathered nest of my folks have presented some interesting fencesharers. The randy possums having a nightly orgy on my parent’s roof were a walk in the park compared to the antics of some of my more recent, but less furry neighbours.
Living in the Brisbane embodiment of Melrose Place might sound totally awesome, but let me assure you having neighbours jump in the pool after their mid-week coke binge and proceeding to have sex right outside your window at 4am is not fun. And on a school night! Yes, too old to live there even at 24.
Nevermind the flamboyant flight attendant coming home from his shift at 1am, bitchily hissing and lisping into this mobile phone to his boyfriend. It wasn’t just the mobile domestic that was disturbing, but the 22 kilos of duty-free Clarins products being dragged up the stairs, banging each metallic step on his ascent. I hope your Beauty Flash Balm exploded all over the deezigner underpants, JustJack.
Then there was the disturbing bloke in the building across the road who would pull out binoculars to have a good old sticky beak into our units… no nudey runs from the bathroom for the residents of Vernon Terrace or Pervy McCreepy will get an eyeful of you in the nicky-noonah.
The next step was to remove myself from the hipster outskirts of Brisbane’s CBD and upon Mr C’s and my arrival to our nicely clapped-out inner-North unit, Tony* seemed normal. Cut to Tony playing talk back radio (why?!) at ultra-sonic levels for eight hours straight overnight and being sprung trying to clamber over the lattice work of our ground-floor neighbours Rex and Carol.
Tony’s evening listening paled into comparison with another neighbour, who’s name we never discovered, but was dubbed ‘that alco on the second floor’ after the police had to be called at 11.30pm on a Sunday following three hours of window rattling Triple M. I never care if I hear ‘Beds are burning’ one more time. Our neighbour had drunk himself into such a stupor he could not hear the marvellous mix of Guns’n’Roses, Cold Chisel and misogynistic DJ’s, despite operating at levels deaf roadies could hear with earplugs at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
And our delightful neighbour across the hall’s welcome wagon included accusations of putting rubbish in her bin less than two hours after moving in. When she could not find the phantom rubbish bandit, she pulled out said rubbish covered in maggots and left it in the garden. This happened more than once.
Tired of rubbish-related finger pointing and cracked foundations from poor radio station choice, Mr C and I headed to a complex that housed more cranky senior citizens than back to back Seinfeld episodes featuring George’s parents. On meeting our neighbour, Cheryl* listed everything she hated about the previous owners. Can you believe they had a four year old they let play in the yard? That would sing and laugh? I don’t think they realised they’d moved next door to the fun police – no fun allowed. Nor washing dishes after 5pm apparently. ‘I can hear everything.’ Really? Can you hear me say someone in number 12 needs to get laid?
Cheryl wrote notes to body corporate about us. She complained how noisily we closed our door. She yelled over the fence to ‘shut the eff up’ at 7pm to a group of eight friends on Boxing Day for laughing in our yard. Result: we put our house on the market within six months of moving in.
The clanger hit the following Australia Day. While enjoying the Hottest 100 at about 2pm she called Mr C demanding some quiet. Mr C feeling bold on some festive lemonades told Cheryl to bugger off. I went over to apologise for Mr C’s words, but appealing to her sensibilities were pointless. When asking Cheryl to lower her voice, she claimed she had to scream to be heard over our racket. The racket which I was straining to hear from her doorstep. I asked when we should be entertaining our friends to be told never. On explaining to her she was the reason our house was on the market, Cheryl said she didn’t care and hoped someone more considerate bought our place. I hoped the local chapter of Bandidos would come to our next inspection.
Are you neighbours more like Mike and Carol or Peggy and Al?
It culminated in Cheryl calling the police on our Sing-Star send off when we sold the place many months later. A heated driveway debate the following morning did nothing to dull my ire, probably because I didn’t get to use my verbal daggers of ‘it’s no wonder you live alone’ and ‘you’ll probably die alone too’.
Justice has not been served so I still get an intense urge to purchase rotten eggs and prawn heads every time I drive through Hendra.
Following our militant banshee co-dweller, living on a main road with a drug den across the street and two-minute-noodle gobbling student neighbours seemed preferable.
The occasional 3pm to 9am party, the intermittent shriek of ‘OMG, he SO did not say that!’ and the overly chatty Frenchman talking on Skype at 10pm every night and blowing the remnants of an entire packet of cigarettes through our living room window, really isn’t that terrible after living next to the residential equivalent of North Korea.
Even the regular domestics at our friendly neighbourhood drug dealer’s and calling the ambulance for young ladies passed out on our footpath after downing too many dodgy eccies at the Normanby can’t dampen my spirits following the reign of Cheryl Guddafi.
So the moral of the story is dodgy neighbours suddenly seem the new millenium equivalent of Mr and Mrs Brady after living next door to the Bundys – Peggy, Al or Ted.
*Tony is not his real name, but slightly unhinged loner with atrocious taste in radio/ cat burglar isn’t very catchy.
*Cheryl is her real name, and I share it because she was the most hideous human being I have ever encountered.
It's Claire as mud 
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