More letters continued to arrive and were mostly left unopened. The one letter I did open threatened to call the RCMP for some outlandish reason. Bring it on, I thought, and expressed that to them in person. Of course, it was an empty threat, but enough was enough.
With my survival at the forefront, I put the house up for sale. The neighbour grabbed my real estate agent as she was showing the house, and complained about the rock wall. I told the listing agent that two engineers were consulted and that they mentioned how many hundreds of years the walls in Britain have stood, and assured me mine would too. I also produced the recent survey proving the wall was totally within my yard. I mentioned the survey was not cheap as property marking pegs had mysteriously disappeared (oh gee, I wondered who removed them). The pegs had to be replaced at my expense. Money flowed from my pockets, yet I heard no complaints from the neighbours about it flooding their conscience.
The house sold quickly. The gorgeous garden I had lovingly developed was the main attraction to the purchasers, plus the location, if you do not include the folks next door. I later learned the previous owners of my house sold it because of the aggravation the neighbours caused. After our house sold, one of the younger neighbours further down the street told me that he too had been harassed and ended up yelling to the neighbours to "f off" and even changed his phone number as they started phoning their complaints/demands. I wished I had learned this prior to my selling. Perhaps our combined effort may have resulted in a foolproof tactic to stop the harassment.
Guilt over selling the house to unsuspecting people tangoed with my conscience, but that was short-lived. The new owners were young professionals and would hopefully have the stamina to ignore and/or effectively counter the neighbours' dictates. Perhaps they might even meet and align themselves with the younger neighbour down the street, thus presenting themselves as a strong front against the abusive demands.
Quite frankly, Mr Robert Frost, there isn't a fence big enough to make good neighbours of the folks next door!
