THE BULLY NEIGHBOUR, THE BAD BUILDERS AND THE DYING CAT

This not very happy tale of neighbourly behaviour has every element of farce needed for a comedy, except that for the poor lady at the center of it all there is nothing to laugh about.

The story began with the the residents of the top two floors of a house in one of the roads crossing Ladbroke grove and Portobello road deciding they needed a bigger home, but before they sold the home they had it renovated to make it more 'sell able', and it wasn't long before a builders firm was employed and had began the renovating work, sadly the builders turned out to be like one of those cowboy building companies that you only ever hope to see on TV, the price they quoted to complete the whole job, materials and all was half that of the cheapest other quote given, obviously this firm wanted the job no matter what.

It wasn't long after the builders moved in before things started to go wrong, first the builders ripped up all the floorboards exposing the ceiling of the lower flat, which left themselves nowhere to walk when they needed to get from one room to another or anywhere to stand when they needed to work, predictably it wasn't long before one of the builders put his foot through the plaster ceiling below him, unluckily this falling plaster (and almost his boot) hit a poor bloke on the head who happened to be carrying out repairs in the lower flat, then a few days later another part of the lower flats ceiling was damaged, all appeals to the builders for someone in some kind of supervisory role fell on non understanding ears as all the builders claimed only to understand polish, Dismissing these two incidents as bad luck life went on, then juddered to a halt again and again as the cowboys disrupted in turns the electricity supply, the water supply, they created a mess in the lower flat, as well as a lot of noise and blocking the hallway with their mterials. While decorating the shared corridor the builders somehow managed to plaster shut the front door of the downstairs resident making half a days work of opening it up again for a builder who had to be called in (who was dismayed at the poor standard of work from the building team above), the ceilings and walls of the downstairs flat soon became streaked with cracks and splits, plaster dust would flutter down on heads and built up on the light bulbs.

This disruption was felt most of all by the ageing lady downstairs and one of her beloved cats, even before the builders arrived the cat had begun to show signs of old age but the constant noise of the renovation and the disruption was too much, the cats health became visibly worse with apparent stress quite quickly (the stress was doing its ageing owner no good either), one of the last jobs the cowboy builders carried out was the laying in of a new cheap and tacky looking wood floor in the shared hallway, despite the hallway also being the joint possession of the bottom flat's resident who was not consulted or informed of the work.

As a parting gift the builders left the lady in the lower flat with the bill for having the blocked joint toilet plumbing cleared twice of plastic bags and builders refuse/rubble, all calls made to the builders were ended when they slammed the phone down whenever they were questioned about their work on that address.

Shortly after all the disruption a new neighbour took up residence in the upstairs flat, this was to sadly spell the end for the poor cat.

The new neighbour a young lady moved in her furniture and took up residence only a few days after the cowboy builders had left, and events went down hill from then on, the first time she tried out her new bathroom in fact. As soon as the water was turned on it began to leak out of the newly plumbed pipes, unfortunately the leak was not noticed by the new resident (or so she claimed) and was pouring into the wall and ceiling cavities as well as running down the back walls of both floors in the lower flat. Before long the leak had erupted into a torrent, now pouring down the back wall and soaking both floors of the lower flat, by the second day the water was everywhere, the ceilings were bulging under the weight of the water that was dripping from many places (including light fittings) and the floors were sodden, the ill cat was by now having an even more terrible time of it, the stress of the leak and the disturbance it had created made the poor cat incontinent with stress.

The poor cat owner was by now frantic with the flooding situation and her beloved cats worsening health, she called her trusted builder back to try and stop the leak, he took one look and it was obvious to him that the leak was coming from the plumbing of the upstairs flat, the only way to turn it off was via the plumbing upstairs he explained, accordingly he knocked on the upstairs flat door and it was opened by the new resident who was near naked except for a small towel (which was a bit weird as she didn't know who was calling), the neighbour was informed of the leak and was shown the damage that was being done, she was also shown the probable courses the plumbing took and was asked to please turn her water off until a plumber could come and look at the problem. "Job done" thought the bloke as he left, how wrong he was.

Once the builder had left the new neighbour decided that maybe the leak wasn't coming from her pipes after all and could of been coming from the pipes of the downstairs flat (despite having the houses plumbing layout explained to her by the builder), the arcane Newtonian laws of gravity were obviously not her strong point! The new resident replied to the requests to tun off her water so a plumber could be called by questioning whether the pipes belonged not to her but to the downstairs flat then ignoring the situation. A day or two later the neighbour disappeared for a week up to morcome to the Conservative party conference for whom it turns out she is a councillor in local government, she left knowing the water was still pouring into the lower flat and that the leak could of been coming from her pipes.

It was almost one month before the lady in the lower flat managed to get the new neighbour to allow entry to a plumber, in that time the water had caused considerable damage yet still the new neighbour would not entertain any notion of responsibility, in fact she did the opposite and went on the offensive, big time.

Rather than face up to the responsibility of the damage her new home had wrought on its neighbour the new resident started to send letters threatening 'action' if the cat did not desist in its odorous pooping, the cat meanwhile was unaware of this and continued on its path to the afterlife with its owner frantically cleaning up behind it, finally dying about a month later.

During the cats last weeks and after the new neighbour continued on with a series of what can only be described as spiteful acts, acts like the continued threatening letters about a now gone cat smell, a male friend insulted the cat owners gardener when he wouldn't (he couldn't, he didn't know it) give out her email address, upstairs she repeatedly threw her cigarette butts into the lower garden, blocked the hallway with junk mail and discarded envelopes making it dangerous if one were to slip on paper that was laying around on the new cheaply varnished floor, she cluttered the shared refuse area with loose rubbish which the dustmen will not remove and she would not clear up, and most importantly she still refused to take any responsibility for the damage her plumbing had caused in the home below, not one smidgen.
Even now just over a year later the new resident/owner of the upstairs flat will not admit responsibility, even though in her capacity as a councillor in local petty government she is better placed to be advised on what appropriate action to take than most others, the joint area is still a mess and the shared hallway also. The cat at least is now at rest in the back garden.

The now considerable damage to the lower flat is still there, ultimately creating many more problems for both the lower and upper flats if the damp from the back wall rises to consume the entire back portion of the house, in the future she upstairs may either have to face her responsibility and pay for repairs or sell the house in its damp rotten state at a loss.