Really bizarre encounter with Next Door, demanding to know why I kept putting my brown (garden and food waste) bin back out after she’d put it in (err, because the council told me to leave it out for recollection and if you’d asked I would have told you this?), which after several repeats got around to “It’s my land” (no, it’s not, I’ve checked your deeds myself; my lawyer says that if it belongs to anyone it’s the Highways Agency, just like (as I didn’t say, she was literally screaming by this point) your front garden), “I could just put a fence up”, etc, and then -- which I suspect is the nub, that I’d painted the fence without asking permission to go on their land (you gave me permission when I moved in, but fair enough, I won’t do that side again: no one but you and your B&B guests can see it).

Given I finished painting the fence on the 10th April, and it was that day that they set that fire by my shed and about then that my bin started being moved (I don’t know wtf is going on, the other bins are being emptied fine), she’s presumably been stewing ever since and working herself up to a hissy fit.

I went out to my sewing group shortly after, moving my bin back out but (in a spirit of conciliation) leaving it at the other side of my drive rather than in the usual spot between mine at theirs. When I got back, it had been moved back but left open to show it was empty, and a scrawled note stuffed through my door saying that egg shells are not compostable and it hasn’t been emptied because I had put them in it (as they never use their brown bin, I guess they have never checked the rules). She actually opened up my biodegradable food caddy bags, that were disgustingly stinky have been sitting out there through the recent hot weather. Wtaf? (I have no idea where she’s put the stuff that was inside it; they were working in the front garden when I got back so I just came inside. I may go out after dark to check it’s not in my landfill.)