Neighbour politics and relations can be a delicate balancing act, but my giddy aunt, this one just beats the biscuit.
A woman proceeded to erect what was reportedly a 100-foot fence around her front garden.
The fence looks quite nice, to be fair. It’s not cutting out anyone’s light and has been put up very professionally, and she put the fence up because her dog is blind and she didn’t want her pooch to run out into the road and get run over by passing cars. That’s a valid reason to be putting up a fence, right?
Cindy Copley’s beloved Cocker Spaniel Murphy lost his eyesight in his old age. So, the 66-year-old grandmother decided the best way to keep him safe was to build a 3-foot-tall, 100-foot-long fence to stop him from running onto the road by accident.
Cindy didn’t like putting her dog Murphy in her back garden as apparently it’s too small, hence her decision to fence off the front garden, but it left her neighbours fuming, with some of them saying it was ugly and ruined the street.
A neighbour said, “It’s the ugliest fence in the world; what does she even think she’s doing?
“It has upset a few people down this road. I’m furious.”
Another said, “You can’t just put up a big ugly fence on a whim; it should be done properly through the council and by asking everybody in the street.”
Cindy, though, is perplexed by the whole situation.
It’s just a fence. It doesn’t look ugly. It is a bit on the large size, but then she has a fairly big garden at the front of her house, and why shouldn’t her garden have its own bit of privacy?
She told the Sun: “It’s just a fence; I can’t see what the problem is. It’s pathetic.
“I can’t get my head round it; it’s to keep Murphy safe from the main road.
“If I knew this was going to cause this much hassle, I wouldn’t have put it up.”
Her daughter Kate said the fallout from the fence construction has caused her parents great “stress and anxiety.”
She said, “They are both retired, and all they wanted was a safe place for their blind doggo.”
They have received support from some neighbours, though, with one local saying it is “nothing but a decent fence.”
“People really will moan about anything and nothing at the same time,” they added.
The woman paid for the fence to be built; it’s not as if she solicited financial assistance from all of her neighbours. It won’t damage their stuff, and it won’t have any negative effects on their emotional well-being either!
Sadly, the only way to avoid disputes with neighbours is to have no neighbours.
Since it’s not a communal garden, why would it have an impact on other people? And what possesses people to behave in this way?
The lady who built the fence has done nothing wrong. She just wanted a safe place for her dog and perhaps some privacy. That’s her right, so long as it’s not encroaching on anybody else’s property or cutting out their light.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 