Nightmare Neighbour

We are very lucky with our neighbours. Really. We are. They are considerate, sociable and the kind of people we would actually choose to be friends with even had geography not thrown us together. However there is a fly in the ointment, a carbuncle on an otherwise perfect landscape and she lives just a couple of doors down from us in converted farm steadings.

On a day to day basis she is just your usual run of the mill annoying neighbour- letting her dog foul outside other peoples houses, lighting a bonfire the second anyone hangs out clean washing, parking in other peoples parking spaces and blocking the narrow path with her wheelie bin. However, her favourite hobby is stealing other peoples mail and flicking through it for any juicy gossip contained inside. I have the mis-fortune that my maiden name is very similar to her surname and for a spell the postman was rather confused and delivered a lot of my mail to her house. No problem you would have thought, just stick it through the right letterbox, but no. Instead she held onto it for several months opening anything she thought might be of interest, inculding bank statements, bills and check books. On discovering her litttle hobby I pointed out that not only was this not a very neighbourly thing to do it was also a tiny bit illegal and the situation was seemingly resolved. Until this week when I ordered my dads birthday present. Tracking online the postal service said the order had been attempted to be delivered, but not to me. On investigation it was discovered that the attempted delivery was made to her house. Because she was not in a letter was put through her door explaining that there was duty to be paid and the parcel could be collected from Inverness. She knew this because she opened the letter, read it AND THEN BINNED IT!!!!! She didn't even have the decency to shove the opened letter through our door.

After that though the day did get a lot better. We went to the Heathmount in Inverness for dinner (lovely food, nice staff- you shouldtry it if you're ever in the vicinity). This photo is of Katy chilling in her highchair.