The letter

So there I was quietly contemplating the complete inability of the construction company to ask their workforce to synchronise their timepieces to an accepted norm, when the letter box rattled. Oh I thought, have I become one of the lucky few to receive unbelievably low cost government funded insulation to keep me warm in the winter? I rejoiced at the thought of adding the offer to the huge pile of valuable offers I have received over the years which actually make quite good insulation on their own.

No, it wasn’t that. It took me a while to recover from that disappointment. No, it was a letter from Pissemoff Homes. In essence it read:

Dear Mr Nomark,

Your fence is in the wrong place and, on our land. You must take it down and position it nearer your house because…well…because…because we are the country’s biggest fence movers and we need to increase our profit by 0.000000005% by making the lives of others a complete misery.

Lots of hate

Mr Callousgreedypig

Now, I’m thinking, I’ve lived in this house for eleven years and the fence has been there (well the concrete posts have) for twenty years so I look around the room for a shimmering portal through which time has cruelly played a wizard wheez on me, but no such object existed. Next thing my next door neighbour comes round with the self same letter, looking perplexed and annoyed.

We discussed it for a few seconds then visited the quintessential little old lady (Mrs Lovelylikemygran) next but one. She, a widow and recovering from the big C was shaking in terror. Her garage which (strange this one) she used as a…garage, was to be demolished to make room for a low cost housing hard standing. This would require her to fund the demolishing and she would have to keep her car on the main road.

My loss would be a newly built summerhouse, and several thousand pounds worth of trees and landscaping, a concrete surface water soakaway (underground water drain).

My immediate neighbour would lose screening trees and a lot of garden for his very young family.

After comforting Mrs Lovelylikemygran we decided to do our research. I rapidly read into borders and boundaries and discovered that actually, in the vast majority of cases, hard and fast boundaries are nothing more than fuzzy notional edges.

The red line denoted on title deeds means absolutely nothing apart from roughly where your property extents are and in reality your boundary is denoted by either OS maps, actual physical boundaries (fences, hedges, walls etc) measured values or a combination thereof.

So armed with this knowledge and renewed enthusiasm that actually, since Mrs Lovelylikemygran’s wall had been in position for about sixty years, there was little to worry about…

We employed a very expensive surveyor who is about to carry out a detailed survey of the boundaries in dispute.

In the interim I wrote to Mr Callousgreedypig and asked him how much land he thought was his and where was the proof?

Two weeks on I have more roof insulation contributions but Mr Callousgreedypig’s reply is completely missing. My letter probably resides in Mr Callousgreedypig’s loft.

At the same time I thought I’d outline the story to my MP (Mr Babykissifihaveto) in the thought that he would be concerned that money grubbing corporate monsters bullying his innocent and blameless constituents might be of interest and he might like to help the fight. I thought at least there would be a kind word to reassure Mrs Lovelylikemygran that at least her council tax would be going lower. Haw naive am I…”he’s at the same club dear boy” came the words from a wise old man.

It’s interesting that, even when you absolutely know that you are in the right, that the deep pockets of the shiny-arsed corporate lawyers who serve the faceless, gutless, morally bankrupt construction companies will always win, because there are Bentley’s, Seychelles holidays, private schools and dovecotes to be paid for by treading all over ordinary people – “easy meat, old boy, easy meat.. another glass of port?”