The neighbour from hell

I'm always fascinated by those acrimonious neighbour disputes that just go on and on for years, disputes that surely could have been easily resolved a long time ago with a bit of common sense and compromise.

This one is a splendid example. Yoga teacher Kristyna Robinson endured seven years of misery from her upstairs neighbour Sandra Eveno, until the landlord, the local council, obtained a repossession order on Ms Eveno's flat and she was forced to leave.

Ms Eveno had shouted and screamed unremittingly, had tried to take over their shared garden, had accused Ms Robinson of drug dealing and gang violence, and had made false allegations to her other neighbours and her employer.

Ms Eveno was ordered to pay £15,000 towards the council's legal bills.

Hopefully this will end Ms Robinson's seven-year ordeal - unless Ms Eveno continues to pester her former neighbour despite having moved out.

Clearly Ms Eveno's irrational behaviour suggests serious mental health issues, but I can't see her seeking therapy. More likely she'll persecute her new neighbours just as badly and get evicted again.

We had a similar neighbour dispute when we moved into a London flat in 1993. The young lads downstairs held late-night parties every few days. We asked them to have fewer parties but they took no notice and in the end the local council imposed a huge fine for noise nuisance and they moved out.

We had another neighbour dispute in a previous flat. One of the downstairs occupants had a persistent hacking cough, and when we tentatively told him it was disturbing us, his response was to let our car tyres down.

Which is why we're now glad we live in a detached house with no neighbour nuisance whatever.

Fragile trees

At about 5 am on Friday morning Jenny and I were woken by a very loud thud from outside the house. We discovered that our magnificent eucalyptus tree in the back garden had been blown down by the ferocious gusts of Storm Eowyn and was completely blocking the road.

At about 5.30 am we saw that our huge pittosporum tree behind the kitchen had also been brought down by the storm. Luckily it didn't damage the heating oil supply pipe close by or we would have had a further problem - oil leaking everywhere.

Fortunately a tree surgeon came past later on a visit to a neighbour's house where two more trees had collapsed, and we arranged to have the eucalyptus tree cut up and removed yesterday morning.

Now of course Jenny and I have to decide whether to replace the eucalyptus or not to bother. We're inclined not to get another as it has shallow roots and is more vulnerable to strong winds. I'm told they're also more liable to fall if they're in moist soil, which weakens the roots. And guess what Northern Ireland is known for? Quite a lot of rain....

We probably won't replace the pittosporum either, as it was too close to the house and also has shallow roots.

Trees are very beautiful, they provide shade in the summer, they provide places for birds to nest, and they're good for the environment. But they're not so appealing if the little blighters decide to fall down and it costs us an arm and a leg to have them removed.

But I guess the two trees had a good run for their money. They were at least 20 years old and were lovely to look at.

Pics: Pittosporum tree (top); eucalyptus tree (below)

Self medication

Of course we all self medicate to some extent. We attempt to avoid all the palaver of seeing doctors or going to hospital by trying some recom-mended medicine or diet or exercise routine.

Except that some people think they actually know better than doctors, take things to an extreme and cause themselves and others serious harm.

It's horribly sad when people are convinced they can cure their cancer with some sort of natural remedy or unusual health regime, and end up not only not being cured but maybe dying much sooner than they would have done.

It's even sadder when parents harm their own children by subjecting them to an extreme diet - vegan or macrobiotic or whatever - which children can't digest properly and which lacks vital nutrients. Even when the child is visibly sick and in need of emergency medical treatment, they still insist the diet is health-promoting and refuse to give it up.

I just wonder how anyone can be so stubborn and so irrational as to pursue a self-chosen "treatment" based on nothing but subjective belief.

A Florida mother who fed her three children on a strict vegan diet of raw fruit and vegetables was jailed for life for killing her 18 month old son. He was severely malnourished and weighed only 17 pounds (8 kilos) when he died.

If I had some severe illness, I would never presume to know more than the doctors and pursue some eccentric regime I'd seen on social media or heard someone gossiping about. I'd assume the doctors knew better than me, even if they might sometimes get things wrong.

Self medication has its limits.

Shunning the jab

There's concern among health professionals at the declining take-up of vaccines, especially among young people. They're worried about the misinformation spread online exaggerating the risks of vaccines.

Some four per cent of the population resist vaccinations, either for themselves or for their kids. They're concerned about the safety or side effects of vaccinations, they think their child doesn't need protecting, or they believe vaccines are not very effective.

But many more people were kept alive by the covid vaccine than died, despite anti-vaxxers claiming that many people have suffered harmful after-effects.

Personally I've never suffered any serious after-effects from vaccines, and I've had loads of vaccinations in my 77 years on the planet - flu, shingles, tetanus, covid, and all the childhood vaccinations for things like measles, mumps and rubella.

But I know of people who've developed long covid, which is about two million people in the UK. Fit and healthy people have suddenly become bed-ridden and their lives have been drastically curtailed.

Long covid doesn't follow vaccination though, it only follows an acute covid infection. In fact a covid vaccination tends to limit a covid illness and prevent long covid. So refusing to have a vaccination is irrational.

Of course you can say that if I myself had developed long covid I wouldn't be so enthusiastic about vaccinations. Maybe so, but all I can say is that I was vaccinated and luckily I had only very minor after-effects.

Objecting to vaccinations seems like throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Desperate measures

Thousands more young adults are living with their parents because they can't afford to live indepen-dently. Property prices and rental fees have rocketed while salaries have barely risen, and if they're living on their own they just can't make ends meet.

I'm glad I never had to consider living with my parents. When I was a young adult there were still plenty of affordable rentals and I could live on my own quite easily. I did so for 6½ years, and most of the people I knew were equally self-reliant.

I couldn't possibly have moved in with my parents, they had very different personalities and opinions, and we'd have fallen out rapidly. As it was, I was estranged from my father for many years so living with him was never a realistic option anyway.

Apart from anything else, if  I'd been under my parents' roof, I'd have had a very restrained existence. I couldn't stay out late and get back in the small hours as it would have woken them up. I couldn't get drunk as they didn't approve of alcoholic excess. I couldn't have had friends round as they were somewhat anti-social. It would never have worked.

Some parents are happy to have their children living with them again. They don't like being "empty-nesters" and can't adjust to a half-empty house. Other parents are glad to have the house to themselves and only reluctantly allow their children to return. My parents would definitely have been the latter.

Hotel Mum and Dad has never been more popular.

What I dread

I really dread getting seriously ill these days, given the huge crisis in the NHS. People are waiting hours for an ambulance, then maybe more hours outside a hospital waiting to be admitted, and maybe more hours still before getting any effective medical treatment.

If I have a heart attack or a stroke, I'm highly unlikely to get prompt medical attention, because of long waits for medical treatment. By the time an ambulance arrives I could either be dead or much more seriously ill.

Significant numbers of people are dying unnecessarily because of long waits for medical treatment. It's estimated that there were almost 300 deaths a week associated with long accident and emergency waits in 2023.

Neither the British government or the Northern Irish government show any sense of urgency in getting the NHS back to its former high standards, the standards that were once seen as the envy of the world. Now the healthcare systems of many other countries are seen as better than the NHS.

We oldies and our multiple medical issues are often blamed for the parlous state of the NHS, but of course that's nonsense. The problem is a much more general one - lack of staff, lack of money, lack of up-to-date equipment, lack of efficient organisation.

More and more people are resorting to private healthcare as the NHS fails them. People who've been waiting absurd lengths of time for surgery, scans, physiotherapy or other procedures, people who've been in agonising pain for months or even years, are having to fall back on private provision to get the immediate attention they need. But of course many people simply can't afford to go private, they just don't have the spare cash.

And the situation isn't going to improve any time soon.

Hidden away

Liam brought up an interesting question about art. Should private individuals be allowed to buy up as many famous paintings as they like and keep them hidden away, or should those iconic artworks be on permanent public display in museums and galleries?

A tricky question. There are strong arguments on both sides.

• Don't individuals have the right to buy whatever they choose, even if it's something other people would love to look at but can't? After all, there are thousands more remarkable paintings for people to look at, so what does it matter if a small fraction of them are stashed away somewhere inaccessible?
• On the other hand, shouldn't the public have the right to view famous masterpieces whenever they like without their being squirreled away for the benefit of half a dozen lucky people? Why should we be deprived of a celebrated painting people want to study more closely and marvel at?

Well, we have several original paintings hanging on our walls, and intend to hang on to them, which is easy enough as none of the artists are well-known and nobody is clamouring to see them any time soon.

A bit of a shame as we can't make shedloads of money out of selling them to the highest bidder. The Van Gogh in the article mentioned was last sold to a Japanese paper tycoon for $62.5 million and today would probably fetch about $300 million.

I think a compromise solution would be for private collectors to be obliged to exhibit their art works publicly for at least a few months every year, to give people a chance to see them. Anything else is just selfish hoarding.

Pic: Portrait of Dr Gachet by Van Gogh. Thought to be owned by an Italian family.