Around us we've got a drunk who likes to drive her jeep into inanimate objects (and people probably given the chance), a whole bunch of new families with kids who don't know to look when crossing the road (see above)... Oh, the kids all have quad bikes when they aren't nearly getting knocked down themselves

The next door neighbour continually blocks my sister's car with his own, and once hit my dad round the shoulder with a shovel after accusing him of reporting said neighbour to the benefits peeps. He's actually one of the nicer people these days and we get on fine now

The problem is basically people who bred like rabbits and didn't have enough sense to begin with...

Of all the responses so far, this is the closest to me:

Only I set the pace most of the time.

I used to live in a modern terrace with very thin walls. It got very annoying when the woman on one side and the gay couple on the other were at it at the same time. Their bed squeaked and she just screamed. Not what you want to hear when you're trying to get to sleep.

She was weird too. We lived there for three and a half year without incident, then, when we gave our months notice, she started moving our wheelie bin and putting a plant pot there. She claimed it was here land. Despite the fact if you stood there and looked directly up you could see out bathroom was there. I couldn't be arsed to argue seeing as we were leaving.

We call our neighbours "Mr & Mrs Fishwife"

We live on a lovely farm in a quiet secluded area which is wonderfully quiet and peaceful. Our previous neighbours (who actually own the place) used to live in the farmhouse across the yard and they were perfect neighbours, you hardly ever heard them and when they went out, they did it quietly. Then their daughter (Mrs Fishwife) and her family moved in so they could have more space for their growing sprogs and since then it's been like a warzone.

The kids slam the door everytime they leave the house, Mrs Fishwife is regularly out screeching at her kids, they built a gate between our building and theirs when they moved in ostensibly to keep the dogs and kids from straying out of the garden, but we're the only ones who religiously keep the gate shut. I'm always coming home and finding their dogs out on the drive and the gate wide open.

Their idea of a lie-in at the weekend is 07:00 and during the summer we have to keep the back windows shut otherwise I get woken up early by them all harping on at each other. The kids are terrors and the dogs, although lovely, are all either deaf or disobediant, Rusty is the worst, a little terrier who completely ignores any effort to call him in. We have one or another member of the family shouting or whistling for that damn dog at all hours of the night. I want to buy a retainer leash at Xmas and leave it wrapped outside the door with a note saying "To Rusty, From Santa" so they get the message. FFS if you know your dog is a) not in the yard and 2) disobediant, why would you wait until 10pm to start calling it in, especially when you *know* your neighbour has to be up at 05:30 for work!?!?!?

Oh yes, I'm dealing with something very similar at the moment. What I've tried is going online and downloading sound FX of (a) assorted gunfire and (b) very angry animal growls and playing those out of the open windows at Motörhead volume when the f-ing dog is yapping. Sometimes this is well after 10 pm and lets the owners know in no uncertain terms what we think of the situation.

Last summer, someone put a newspaper clipping referring to 'ASBOs for pets' through the owners' letterbox at midnight. I saw this happen because I was just opening the front door to go over and complain and saw a mysterious figure - now known as The Midnight Avenger - put the letter through. The next day, the owners put a letter through every door in the Close saying how disgraceful it was that person or persons unknown had done this and if there was any problem with the dog to talk to them directly. Classic.

Good and bad over the years
When I was up north in a terrace house the house attached to mine was bought by a landlord and then filled with people all on benefits. They basically wrecked the place and in the end had to get the council to evict them due to noise, smell, piles of rubbish etc

Where I am now is OK, although next door did have a dog that would not stop barking – they finally got rid of it when it attacked one of them

OK - we have annoying neighbours. Most of the time, they are fairly docile placid people, but they are prone to “performance conversations”. By this I mean that if they are talking to you (or anyone else for that matter), they start addressing an invisible audience. They start to look away from you and start talking to the stalls and, inevitably, the gallery. Watching them do this to other people is fascinating because they appear to think that they are in some TV soap opera.

They have never got the cats’ names right, inventing their own, and even lying about where the cat was at certain parts of the day.

Earlier on this year, we started to get an inkling about a darker side of all this, which I may have documented before, but I’ll repeat here. The wife had a stroke, and was in hospital before last Christmas. We didn’t know, and weren’t told until Christmas eve when we were dropping off presents. It got interesting in January. We had the police round asking if we had seen our neighbour. They managed to get in and found him in an agitated state. We had offered at Christmas and afterwards to be a taxi if he needed to get to his wife, or just needed help. He just does not seem to work in that way.

Same story a few days later, and again a few days after that (but this time not only were the police there, but ambulance crews and doctors). It turns out that he has mental problems, and he had been found by the police and at time just his friend hiding in the loft or in the shed from “the people who talk to him”. Clearly his wife had kept him on the straight and narrow and was regimenting his medication. When on his own, he wasn’t taking it or taking it all in one hit. He had told his daughter to keep away, and his other (grown up) children were dropping by when they could (one coming down from Manchester).

So now his wife is back (albeit in a fragile state), he seems back to normal, which is good. I kind of hope that social services (or whoever) decides that they can’t look after themselves for much longer and ship them off to somewhere where they get the care they need.

So, yeah, annoying neighbours. Got some.

My landlord has just really pissed me off!

She sent me an email to say they are coming round on the 7th, and at the bottom of the email reads "Please remove the doll from the communal area" erm wtf?!! It's got sweet FA to do with the landlord what I/we keep in the "communal area" (in this case the lounge) so long as it's legal and isn't damaging the house.

FWIW, the doll is a blow up sex doll about 4.5 - 5 feet tall and she is stood in the corner of the lounge wearing a grass skirt and one of those Hawaiian paper necklace things.

My landlords are really very good - get things fixed really quick, and keep the house in really good shape. But that tiny little comment has really pissed me off for some reason - what makes them think they have the right to ask me to remove it?!!!

I replied very politely "I'm not sure what you mean when you ask that the doll be removed from the communal area - is it causing a problem?" but I'm sure as hell going to stand my ground and get seriously pissed off if they try and push the issue any further. Is that petty of me?

If they were showing someone the communal area I can understand them wanting it removed; I guess it depends on why they're visiting.

Yeah me too - that's why I've asked if it's causing a problem.

We are signed up until next June so they won't (or shouldn't be) showing anyone around.

Basically - they are an old couple (roughly retirement age) and apparently quite religious (they put bibles in our rooms and leaflets in the lounge for a local church before we moved in) so I suspect it's just not to their taste. Which is tough sh*t as far as I'm concerned.

Seeing as it isn't a big deal try this course of action.

Tell them:
"I'm sorry if it caused any offence"
and then remove the doll.

As far as I can see that would do both parties good because the argument is causing you irritation and the doll is causing them embarrassment (for whatever reason).

I agree, they may be being petty, but is it really worth fighting over?

++;

Remove it, let them visit and then put it back.

Yup. It is their property, after all, and they're being kind enough to let you stay in it. After all, you're not going to be there forever, so I'd temporarily rehouse your plastic inflatable friend.
We used to have a cardboard cut out Vegas-style Elvis in our living room, and a headless mannequin. They didn't cause any fuss from the landlord, but when my mate Nick (a lighting technician) left his room open for a prospective future flat mate to view he left a few things out he probably shouldn't have.
As his hands took a beating from lifting big lumps of steel and aluminium in all weathers, Nick used a Norwegian hand cream.
He also had been entertaining his girlfriend, and sadly left some 'adult' DVDs out.
Hand lotion.
Bongo flicks.
Oh dear.