Sharing the land

For almost 3 years now we have owned our own home. It’s been fantastic. We have a cute house with an amazing view from our deck for miles and miles. Aside from the terrible burglary when everything was stolen and the place was trashed, it’s been a happy home. It is on half a site. In NZ a typical site is quarter of an acre – so our section is just over 400 square metres. Enough space for a yard but not hugely high maintenance.

We have been spoiled because the other half of the section has been empty for the entire time. We don’t even know who the owner was. No one ever came by. We used it for fireworks extravaganzas and for leaving old Christmas trees. You know, standard stuff. At one stage it got pretty overgrown and some sort of mouse infestation began. I called the council and they contacted the owner to get it cleaned up.

Unfortunately that backfired on us a bit. I guess the owner couldn’t be bothered with the maintenance so he decided to sell up. At first that didn’t seem to pose much of a problem. He was asking $300k for the empty site. There weren’t many takers.

Until last weekend. I was in the middle of my weekend naked cleaning routine when I noticed 4 middle aged guys looking through the kitchen window. Interesting. I waved. That threw them a bit. Maybe it was the rubber gloves… reminiscent of Fight Club, but we won’t talk about that.

Apparently they have bought the section and are going to build on it. Gutted. It means that we have to share our driveway and that there will be a whole lot of earth moving and excavation going on. More strange men lurking around. I guess I should probably start wearing clothes around the house.