Retired spinster faces weirdo neighbour

Dimity is 57 and laughingly calls herself a retired spinster. She had bought a beautiful rambling old house in the suburbs while she was still working, and looked forward every day to a retirement spent doing the place up.Unfortunately, her dreams were shattered by the weirdo next door.

The weirdo next door was a man of about 75 who had lived with his mother all of his life until the old lady died at the age of 94 a few years ago. Dimity had adored his mother, she was like a substitute grandmother for her - always ready with advice and a cheery word.

"My own grandmother had died when I was very young," explains Dimity, "so this old lady filled a space in my life. Her son, however, had always been very strange and being about the same age as my own father I never knew how to relate to him."

"Had he been younger," laughs Dimity, "I would have treated him as I do my own younger brothers and sisters - bossed him around!"

Apparently, the weirdo neighbor had never worked and rarely left home for outings. While his mother lived Dimity had tolerated him, but after the old lady died it soon reached a point where Dimity became uneasy living next door to him.

As expected, he let his mother's house and garden become neglected. Every day Dimity averted her eyes from looking in the direction of his property, not just because it was looking very shabby but also because she disliked being cornered by this man and forced into having a neighborly relationship with him - from which he might get ideas.

"The highlights of his day had always been watching me leave for work in the morning, and come back home at night," sighs Dimity. "He was always there."

"When I took early retirement last year, my comings and goings have been irregular so I rarely saw the old man at the window any more," explains Dimity. "He would have had to sit there all day glued to the window to catch me - and thankfully he was never there when I went out at odd hours."

Unfortunately, this blessed state of affairs changed a few months ago when a storm toppled one of the trees on the weirdo’s property. It fell right in front of Dimity's house. She could not open her front door. She had to leave her place through the back door and get to the street through his property.

For the first time since his mother died, Dimity knocked on the door of the old lady's house - which is now his - and waited. And waited. Finally, after her tenth knock - she knew he was there - he opened the door stark naked and pretended he did not know what had happened. Oh really?

Dimity needed to speak with him because she was concerned about the other trees on his property - all of which branched over her property - and one of which was now looking very threatening because its huge boughs formed an umbrella over the roof of her house.

"I ignored his repulsive naked state," laughs Dimity, "I knew he had deliberately taken off his clothes to shock me. I just told him my concerns, but he absolutely refused to give me permission to have the threatening trees on his property felled - even though I offered to pay for the work myself."

"He had a ‘thing’ about trees," explains Dimity. "In fact he had a ‘thing’ about ants, too, but that's another story. When you’re dealing with weirdos, you have to expect the unexpected."

He did not appear at all concerned that one of his trees was now stretched flat across the front of Dimity's house, obstructing her front door; and the demented old man actually laughed when she pointed out that one of the remaining threatening trees might crash on top of her house, possibly causing her or one of her visitors an injury.

Cutting a long story short, Dimity had to gain legal advice and finally the old man was required by law to fell all offending trees - at his expense.

After all of the trouble he had caused her, Dimity seriously considered moving away but decided that she was not going to allow this idiot to affect her life.

Instead, Dimity arranged to have a high timber fence erected, at her expense, between the old man's place and hers.

"He can still leer at me through the chinks in the fence," laughs Dimity, "but I can’t see him - and that’s what matters. Out of sight, out of mind."

In a city apartment, of course, you don't have fence problems and neither do you have just a couple of neighbors - you have hundreds of them. Imagine having hundreds of neighbors like hers!

Dimity's weirdo neighbor could conceivably live to be a hundred or more years and she may have to put up with a neighboring property that, by then, will be a rat-infested old hole.

Dimity is philosophical. A worse scenario for her would be noisy neighbors - especially a family with lots of children.

"The old guy is quiet," she laughs, "and if the rats arrive I can always get a cat."

"Having to deal with the old weirdo is probably my karma," laughs Dimity. "My younger brothers and sisters tell me I was Ms Bossy Boots when we were growing up. I suppose the old guy thought I was bossing him around, too, and really resented that someone younger than himself - and a woman to boot - had the upper hand. But all the same, it was a hell of a battle getting my legal rights upheld."