Nutty Neighbour

We moved to this house in July last year. For the most part, it has been fun and we largely get on with all of our neighbours, except for the woman who lives on the end of our block.

Parking is a problem on this street. All the houses have drives to accommodate two cars, but many of our immediate neighbours have three or four vehicles. We have one car and our nextdoor neighbours have one car. We're always getting blocked in by everyone else. On the one occasion we had a visitor who parked badly, we got a stroppy note from the woman on the end - demanding courtesy and consideration; reminding us that she has a baby (not sure what that had to do with anything) and threatening to report us to the police. Apparently this was the last straw.

I went around to apologise because I don't like bad feeling. I also wanted to point out that she's always blocking us in. Apparently, she's not.

I'm really annoyed with this situation because parking is such a petty issue but it seems to be causing all manner of aggravation around here - not least with us. We concluded that after her written outburst, the woman on the end... let's call her Mitzy... her real name is much sillier but let's give her some anonymity...we concluded, that she would behave like a Parking Paragon of Virtue, i.e. not park across our drive any more

A couple of weeks later, in a hurry to get down to London for Mother's Day, we left the house to find Mitzy's car partially blocking us in. The BF was annoyed and it was too early to be knocking on doors, so he left a note: "If you're going to dictate neighbourhood parking, you should probably act as an example to the rest of us. This is the seventh time you've blocked us in, including letting your friends park on our drive, since you threatened us with the police."

I expected a row when we got home. Nothing. But, Mitzy did stop blocking our drive.

Yesterday, I bumped into our neighbour and he asked me what I thought of the parking problems. Having checked the ground before I started discussing Mitzy, I told him the tale, and he told me a few of his own.

1. She always uses the fact that she has a baby as the reason for her complaint - no matter what the complaint is.
2. She complains about their parking too - usually while they're in the middle of unloading something heavy from the car - because she has a baby.
3. She complains about their noise - because she has a baby - then proceeds to drown them with her noise.
4. A parcel was delivered to them one day. They were out and the postie left it with Mitzy. When they went to collect it, they thanked her and said how grateful they were. Two hours later, there was a note pushed through their door, informing them: "I hope you don't expect me to spend all day, everyday, sitting in to wait for your parcels. I'm very busy and I have a baby."
5. She always complains with a note.

I'm really glad I spoke to the chap nextdoor. I was wondering if it was just us.