h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I became the victim of an assault at the weekend.

A situation has been building up withone of my neighbours. She believes that there s an 'unwritten rule' that she owns the entire road in front of her house. I believe that I have a small circle of paper in my windscreen which entitles me to park on any public highyway, other than where parking restrictions are in force. This has sometimes meant overlapping into her space - although always, out of common decency, leaving her with more than adequate parking space (we're talking Sherman Tanks...the SI unit of road measurement). But she has confessed an inability to perform basic manoeuvres required as part of the National Driving Test...and besides - 'it's an unwritten rule'. We've had her shrieking at our door several times recently and have had to close the door in her face. It's been quite amusing sometimes watching her nip out to move her car as soon as we move one of ours. Frankly, we don't care where we park - but we don't want to be bullied into meeting her bizarre whims.

Anyhow...it degenerated further on Friday evening. Her ex-husband approached me in the street and said he wanted to 'Sort out this parking situation once and for all.' I explained calmly that we don't have a situation and went to get into my car. The situation got more and more heated (on his side), with yelled threats that he was going to "ing slash [my] ing tyres, and then come back and ing do them again!" Eventually, despite my best Crisis and Agression Limitation and Management techniques, it led to his squaring up to me, shouting 'Come on, let's just go for it right now!' and pushing me in the chest. I just stood there, arms by my side, and said 'Now don't be silly. I'm not going to fight.' (Naturally, I had my attack points worked out though And I'm a hefty bugger!). I got the heat down until I could be reasonably sure we weren't going to get a brick through the window, made a show of shaking his hand...and then gave the police a full statement. The Polis reckon they've got him on Breach Of The Peace, and might even get Assault to stick. Whatever...it's bound to put the fear of god into the eejits.

Oyoyoyyyy...what bizarre behaviour from grown adults. In terms of assault...sure it's at the minor end of the scale. I must admit, though, that it left me more shaken than I'd have thought. And I'm livid that my four year old son, who was in the car, had to witness it.

Hey, well done for dealing so well with the jerk! Having neighbours can be such a nightmare. My last house move was to get away from stressful neighbours.

A similar thing happened to my brother-in-law the other week. I can't remember what his neighbour's gripe was: something to do with the fact that he can't dig up my brother-in-law's driveway to reach a pipe, or something. So he got really drunk, squared up to my B-in-L and was shouting stuff like, "I know where you take your dog and your kids for walks! I'm gonna follow you in the woods and make you pay!"

The police are now keeping an eye on the guy, of course, but my B-in-L and his family are spending as much time away from their home as they can.

And, by the way, I think you provided a really good example to your son. I bet he's proud of his dad.

Jeez.

I feel for you though. This kind of stuff is really, really upsetting and unnerving.

Parking in front of our house used to irritate my wife no end in the last house we lived in. I never really understood it. I mean what do you say to someone who parks a small bit in front of your house? It's not as if you have much of a case.

Well, at least you did absolutely the right thing. I recently saw a situation where a young guy travelling at high speed nearly crashed into another car that was attempting to move out onto the road. The man in the other car was taken unawares and he must have given the young guy a two-finger salute. What happened next was that the young guy screeched to a halt, and jumped out of his car, running full-speed in the direction of the other man. I could not believe it. The man in the car had enough sense to drive away before he was reached, but if he had been touched, I would happily have acted as a witness to it.

I'm no pacifist. But I'd rather take a couple of punches than face the inconvenience of a court prosecution. As a wise man *should* have said 'If someone slaps your cheek...make life difficult for him.'

I am quite proud of keeping my temper, though. It's a practical necessity. If it ever *does* get to a fight, it's much more effective to remain focussed. At one time I did a martially-oriented version of tai chi (and consequently I can defend myself against very slow attackers ). The first rule was 'Run away'...but if shove had come to thump...I'm fairly sure I could have taken him. He wouldn't have been expecting me to stamp on his shin as a first move.

But before anyone gets the impression that I'm some sort of alpha male...I collapsed in floods of tears later that evening.

I can imagine. I've only been assaulted once, when I was 17, and it took me weeks to recover from it. My self-confidence was completely shattered by it.

There must have been huge temptation to stick on the the motha trucka though I bet?

Good skills on dealing with the situation so well. I doubt I owuld have handled it so well at all!

I feel sure that under identical circumstances I owuld have made every effort to park in front of this womans house on general principle.

When they'e out next, get a skip delivered, on-hire for a week, placed exactly where they don't like it. It'll be well worth the 150 quid or whatever they charge.

good call that man

Och...I couldn't be bothered playing silly games. She's a right to park on the street. My standards are that out of sheer decency I'll make sure she has plenty of space to park outside her house. And my standards are that I don't go saying "The whole neighbourhood are talking about you"...let alone commiting acts of violence.

Besides...I pay my taxes so that I can subcontract the police to hassle her.

Look: it's become an epidemic. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6090286.stm

::snort:: She's lucky she doesn't live on my street. Sometimes you're lucky if you canpark anywhere on the same road, never mind outside your house.

I'm not entirely sure where all the cars come from - neither of my neighbours drive.

Absolutely! At one point of the 'discussions', my neighbour said, "Did you used to live in a (imagine the nose-in-the-air intonation at this point) *flat* ?"

Speaking as someone who is so accustomed to traffic congestion and lack of prime parking (and has, on more than one occasion, had to park far enough from the house to warrant a cab ride home from the car), my mind reels at the notion of someone having such a sense of entitlement.

Unless someone has a reserved space (such as handicapped parking like we have here), or rents a spot like we used to do at our place (until they built a condo on the parking lot ), I don't think they have any reasonable expectation of parking in any particular spot.

Some people really do think they are something "special", don't they?

Parking squabbles are interesting for apartment dwellers here in the US, where rental agreements often include one assigned parking stall on the premises. You can't get much more territorial than when you hold a legal document asserting your claim to a few square meters of asphalt, as well as access to recourse... if you go through the process correctly, you can have the offending vehicle towed.

Several years ago I had ongoing problems with just the most awful neighbors ever, who felt the need to blast stereos inside their apartment until my walls shook, sell stereos to the public every Friday right outside my front door and demonstrate them loudly, and storing them in a moving van with a car alarm that was overly sensitive, did not shut itself off with a time delay, and which they also happened to be completely deaf to. I had to call the police a couple of times at 3:00am to get the alarm turned off, because if I knocked and made the request myself I just got a stream of expletives for my trouble. So when the police, all on their own, shut down their stereo operation (yard sales are legal by permit and not given to one person more than twice a year), they decided I was the one who called. The arguments and hostility were getting worse and worse until finally I decided to infringe upon their territory in a similar manner to that in which I felt mine was being infringed upon... so I parked my second car in their stall. They went absolutely nuts, with the woman screaming expletives and the man calling me out to fight, and they moved the next day. If only I'd have known it would be so easy, I'd have done it months before.

A couple years later, in another apartment complex, a woman came home to find her spot occupied, and she decided that the best solution was to sit in her car and honk her horn for an hour. This was right in front of my apartment and my baby needed to go down for a nap, so I asked her quite politely to find another solution... and got a stream of expletives for the next two weeks for my trouble, until finally her promise to get her husband to come after me was finally fulfilled. Luckily I was able to persuade him that I was more trouble than I was worth, and he got her to shut the hell up.

That sort of thing happened to me all the time, because my stall in both places was right up front. My solution was simple. I'd just park behind the offender, forcing them to come to me and ask me to move when they're ready to leave. It meant I blocked in someone next to me, but with the one notable exception, I always got on very well with my neighbors, so I didn't worry about them being hostile if they had to ask me to move it. There's something about having to knock on someone's door and identify themselves as the inconsiderate jerk in question that convinces people that it might be a little easier to just follow the rules next time.

Another time I had a repeat offender, so I came up with the idea of charging rent. I wrote a sign explaining that parking in my spot implies acceptance of the terms of the agreement to pay $35 per hour or portion thereof for occupying my space, payable immediately. Since my wife knows Spanish, I had her translate it into Spanish below. I thought it was hilarious. Just as I went to pin it under their windshield, they came up to their vehicle... and again, that whole identifying themselves as the inconsiderate jerks situation meant that that was the last time it happened.

Thank goodness that part of my life is over now.

And here I am, an apartment dweller in the US, without a parking spot. We park on the street somewhere...

But then again, I have never lived in an apartment complex, so I've never had to deal with the dreaded Parking Lot.

We've got off-road parking.

Lucky you!

My building has a garage, but the landlord uses it. When we buy our own place (we're hoping to buy a condo or townhome within a few years' time, or else a two-flat building) we'll have a designated, off-street parking spot.

K has a knack for finding Rock Star Parking. I imagine it has a lot to do with getting home from work by 4:00 PM.

You did good!