The legend of the Monkey

Legend has it that during the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century, a shipwrecked monkey was hanged by the people of Hartlepool, believing him to be a French spy! To this day, people from Hartlepool are affectionately known as ‘monkey hangers’. A French ship was spotted floundering and sinking off the Hartlepool coast. Suspicious of enemy ships and nervous of possible invasion, the good folk of Hartlepool rushed down to the beach, where amongst the wreckage of the ship they found the only survivor, the ship’s monkey which was apparently dressed in a miniature military-style uniform. Hartlepool is a long way from France and most of the populace had never met, or even seen, a Frenchman. Some satirical cartoons of the time pictured the French as monkey-like creatures with tails and claws, so perhaps the locals could be forgiven for deciding that the monkey, in its uniform, must be a Frenchman, and a French spy at that. There was a trial to ascertain whether the monkey was guilty of spying or not; however, not unsurprisingly, the monkey was unable to answer any of the court’s questions and was found guilty. The townsfolk then dragged him into the town square and hanged him.

I move into my beautiful house and gradually am made aware by other neighbours, who always seem to be looking shiftily about when they talk or tracing an imaginary line on the pavement with their shoe, that I am living next to the worst family in the village.

A family by all accounts that have allegedly been evicted from every house they have ever lived in including being run off a gypsy site. Of course the information given always has the get-out clause of 'Don't tell anyone I told you'!

Such Bravery!!!My heart sinks, but it doesn't take long before the perception becomes a reality and the Neighbours From Hell begin their war of attrition aided and abetted by every piece of human refuse you can imagine.

They set about systematically laying waste to my property, destroying it with a vengeance and trying to destroy me in the process. They and their unhappy band of brothers, used my garden as a shortcut every day, climbing over my wall and looking in through my windows. They raced their whippets around my garden. They even lifted them over my garden wall to defecate when the mood took them. They smashed windows and doors, broke into my shed, wrote several cars off and this was just them warming up. Little did I know it but they hadn't even got into full flow yet.

This wasn't my worst nightmare coming true this was something I had never even dreamed of.

So who do you go to when you have a problem with your neighbours?

Council?

Police?  

MP?

You would have thought so wouldn't you? But not here....no here it's baseball bat mentality!

But that's not me - I don't do fighting in the streets and that's when I came up against the biggest villains in this story..........the  LOCAL AUTHORITIES AND THE BOYS IN BLUE!