Real life | 22 June 2017

All had gone suspiciously quiet down our little track on the village green, and we had begun to think we were being accepted by the neighbours.

We settled in. We continued to park our car in the public space outside our house, and after a week or so not too many people told us to sod off and die. We put in for the monstrously high council tax to be reviewed. We made a few friends. We were happy. And then the dreaded day came when we had to take our building materials down the side alley which goes across a neighbour’s back garden.

We knew it had been a sore point with the previous owner of the house, who admitted on the property information forms that the neighbours were ‘unhappy about the right of way’. So, treading carefully, we told the lady next door we would only use it once a week, for the bins, and to take building materials through while we renovate.