History Repeating Itself?

July 20th was Colombian Independence Day, yet another Public Holiday in the Colombian Calendar.

Our contribution, did not go unnoticed! Albeit I am having to source a smaller England Flag, to match the Colombian one, it didn’t matter at our last house, but here the wind took the flag up onto the razor wire, and was a bugger to disentangle!

I have had the wildlife camera out in the orchard again, and other than catching myself

There was nothing to see, I think because I have had it placed further up the orchard, the wind in the trees kept activating it, so now it is further down the mountain, hopefully away from the worst of the wind.

I have done the damp proofing in the bedroom wall, I am supposed to leave it to activate and dry out for seven days, so it will be the middle of next week, before I can seal up the holes, paint it and reinstall shelves.

I have made new shelves to fit in the wardrobe, I had a load of MDF left over from my shelf building in the Pantry, it was a good excuse to use some, I have sealed it with a varnish wash, which will hopefully stop it from warping.

Unfortunately I haven’t got round to doing anything with the plywood, for the bunkbed stairs, I have changed the design again, so will need to go and buy some treated timber to act as framing, maybe next week.

As the title may suggest, it looks like the problems we anticipated with our new neighbours are coming to fruition, they moved in to the new build as Renters less than a month ago, and think they are Lords of the Manor, we had a confrontation with them when they first did a site visit with the Owner, they demanded we move our septic tank, which is alongside the boundary fence, and had been there some time, I refused, they are supposed to build not less than five meters from the boundary, but the owner had marked out a meter, because it is the only flat spot available, without expensive earth moving, after we objected, the boundary was moved to two meters, big deal, with the roof overhang it is back to one meter.

We came to a compromise, and ran the air pipe from the septic, further down our land, at their expense. At that time I was fuming, they hadn’t even built, and the Renters were dictating what the Neighbours would do, so I stated, just to wind them up, that I had a project lined up to have a few pigs, at which the man, who I believe is a retired Doctor, blew a fuse, and said I couldn’t, they were smelly, I told him, that we are on a working finca and would do as we wished.

I then vowed that I would never speak to either of them again, and I haven’t, but it seems that isn’t good enough for them, they tried bad mouthing me to another Neighbour earlier this week, saying I had told workmen to stop using a plate vibrator to flatten some second hand tarmac the owner had laid down the driveway. When in fact, I had spoken to the Labourer, and asked him to be careful when up against, ‘Our’ boundary wall, because if it cracked, they would have to pay for the repair, he had assured me there wouldn’t be any problem, and that was the case. Fortunately the said neighbour, had been present at that conversation, and put them right, which gave them the huff.

Yesterday, I had to have a fire to burn rubbish, I had put it off as long as possible, but either the new neighbours had been home, or I had been out, it had to be done. The fire pit is alongside their house, and has been there since shortly after we moved here, they knew that, but they decided this was their chance, and husband drove up the drive, stopped alongside Marcela, and started being abusive towards me, much to his amazement she gave back as good as she took, by the time I was on scene, he had driven off, leaving Marcela in mid sentence.

Not prepared to take what he said, Marcela rang the Landlord, and he said he would come down, later yesterday, which he did, I accepted that there was some rubbish that shouldn’t have been on the fire, and explained that as much as possible, I tried to have the fires when they were out, and that would continue, I would also be more careful as to what went on the fire. However despite the demands of the Tenant I wasn’t moving the site, as the only alternative, would have blown directly into their house, and it was the house causing the problem, because prior to it being built, the wind had taken the smoke in the opposite direction.

As I have told the Landlord previously, I have no intention of talking with his Tenant, any problem will still go via him, and sent a message, that if he was ever abusive to Marcela again, or I found out that he or his wife had made any more false accusations, I would ask my Solicitor to make it official with the authorities, and also would go ahead with the Pig project, just to spite him.

Having left to see his Tenant, the Landlord rang us back later to say the other Party were satisfied with the outcome, I doubt they were, but it was probably explained to him, that he is playing with fire, the Landlord knows from many convivial conversations we have had over the months he has been building the place, that I will take no messing from anyone.

Hopefully that is the end of the matter, but I sincerely doubt it, I had better start reading up on pig husbandry!

It was such a lovely day yesterday, Marcela asked me to do some fruit picking, for donations to Neighbours… NO not those neighbours!

So between avocados and mini bananas, the neighbours are all (well nearly all!) happy!

Today, we have been out to do the food shopping, and tomorrow is cleaning day, so I do not anticipate much to report.