The feud goes on

First the good news ......

The tomatoes are turning a healthy shade of pinky/red. We've already eaten a few. Soon we'll have lots to eat. Pretty much all of our veg have grown really well this year.

The ongoing saga with the neighbours continues. While I was on the phone to our solicitor this afternoon, our neighbour rang and rang and rang the doorbell. I work from home quite a lot. Can you imagine someone bugging you at work all the time? It is intolerable.

Once I got off the phone (and did other work stuff), I had another nice wee chat with the neighbours. They invited me into their back garden to see the problem from their side (we have done this before).

They want to push out the boundary as much as possible (and if necessary, kill off the hedge in so doing) in order to build an extension to their house. This is the first time they have mentioned this. At present, they can't get "a brick line" because they have an outside boiler right up next to their fence. They don't want to move the boiler, hence they want to push the fence back out further towards the boundary (which is their right).

I explained to them that if they had to cut back any of the hedge to the boundary line, then so be it, but no further (this is the law). I stressed that if their builder were to pull out/destroy any of the hedge or plants on the boundary line, or even on our side of the boundary line, then there would be trouble.

Hopefully we are agreed on this section of the fence issue .... they can build their fence here.

The next section of the fence is trickier .... there is a mature tree there along the boundary line. They admitted that one of their friends knew the previous lady in the house and that the tree in question had clearly been planted long ago, on their side of the boundary (it is their tree). The problem now is that the tree has grown and is encroaching the boundary.

I told them what their builder said about killing the tree and ripping up the roots on or side of the boundary. Our solicitor strongly advised against this (it could seriously damage the foundation of our garage very close by). They were not aware of this issue. They are now. Our solicitor has suggested that our neighbours simply cut down the tree to ground level, but leave the roots well alone (it might be that if they remove the roots now, that we will have cause to sue them in the years to come .... foundation problems may arise in the future because of this). They are now thinking about this. Hopefully we are now agreed on this second section (although now they are trying to say that the tree is maybe half theirs and half ours and is growing directly on the boundary line ..... no it is not).

The third and final section is overgrown with ivy. We like the ivy, they don't. We have a temporary fence in this section. They want us to pull it down so that they can get a digger in there and remove all the ivy. This is where we disagree and we'll no doubt tackle this issue tomorrow.

I hope we can reach a solution.

I need to speak with our solicitors again tomorrow.