The girls who rent the flat downstairs are really annoying me. I have been waiting til after Christmas to get the fence at the front of the house fixed (the one broken when I had my bicycle nicked). For a while I left it in its normal fence position, but it was leaning over quite badly, so I took it down and laid it on the bit of earth that constitutes our front garden.
On Friday I came back home and the fence was leaning up against my front door. Now, I think that’s rude. If they have a problem with where I’ve put the fence then they should talk to me (likewise if they think I’m being a bit slow getting it fixed). But by leaning it against my door they are saying “Please get this out of my garden”.
Such a gesture isnÂ’t going to make me inclined to speed up the mending of the fence, or indeed put the fence parts elsewhere. Had they had a friendly word, explaining why this was a problem then I might have listened. But they didnÂ’t. So I put the broken bits back where they had been.
I find their behaviour especially rich because I own my flat and the girls are just renting. The renting issue isnÂ’t even all that important, but any mathematical appraisal of the situation says that I own half the house, and half the garden. The girls act as if they own the whole place.
A few months ago they rang my doorbell and said “We’re having a party in the garden tonight. We just thought you should know.”
“Riiiight,” I said, and with that they left.
There wasn’t the slightest whiff of an “of course you’re welcome to come along” which might have been polite (and they know I wouldn’t have done). And what I should have said is “are you asking me, or telling me?” Because half the garden actually belongs to me.
I don’t mind them having a party and to be honest with you I never go in the garden (so maybe they somehow think it totally belongs to their flat – which would make the steps leading down to it from my back door slightly redundant) but it’s once again the rudeness involved. A few days notice would have been nice. A note to check that I wasn’t planning on using the garden that night would have sufficed. Whatever.
Anyway when I got back to the flat tonight the fence parts that IÂ’d left (really unobtrusively, really doing no harm to anyone) in the front garden had vanished. I checked the back garden, but they werenÂ’t there either. Now it is possible that the thieves who stole the bike have come back, realising that the fence they broke is much more valuable than what they got, and made off with the broken stake of wood and the two iron poles. But it seems more likely, given the unusual shiftings of the material over the last few days that the girls have moved it somewhere. Or worse, thrown it away. Which would be extremely annoying as I have a man coming to look at it tomorrow and I donÂ’t really want to have to pay for all new materials.
Jesus may have advised us to love our neighbours. But he might have re-assessed his opinion if he lived above these two (or from their perspective, below me).
