Circa 2001, neighbours were great people, but used to spend every summer weekend at their beach shack, leaving the 18 year old son home “alone” - except he would regularly invite dozens of friends over and party until 3 or 4am.

Many Saturday nights (Sunday morning actually) I would be out there at 3am telling them to stop banging the metal dividing fence and yelling drunken obscenities at full volume. They were literally kids, so we weren’t afraid to confront them. One night I decided to go out almost naked (not a pretty sight) - wearing only a pair of briefs style underwear in a colour that blended in way too close to my skin tone, and that shut them up, only for it to reoccur the following weekend.

Other neighbours were also annoyed. One rang the cops to report underage drinking, but turns out they were all 18 and 19 - 18 is legal age in my state. We approached his father, but he told us we were lying, and that his son was a model student, and doesn’t drink.

So on went the weekly cycle of noise, foul language, and a huge mess of discarded cans & bottles in adjacent properties (even on my roof). Every time we called the cops, they’d come around and the drunks would be quiet. At my wits end, one Saturday night I recognised one of the visitors cars as having failed a recent DECC (EPA) test, as my friend ran the local testing station. He was one of the more vocal ones, telling various neighbours to fornicate when told to quit making noise, and would start that car up at 3 or 4 am and rev it to the limiter to get the exhaust to crackle and pop loudly. I waited weeks for him to get in and drive home after doing this, with the intention to call the cops and dob in a drink driver, but he never did - he’d fall asleep and go home the following afternoon, sobered up.

When they’d all passed out drunk in the early hours one Sunday morning, I slid under the car and cut the oxygen sensor wire near the cat converter. He was a fool who had no idea about cars - other than paying workshops to “build” them, so I knew he’d drive it around for weeks like that, with the check engine light glowing away. Monday morning I rang the DECC hotline to dob in a polluting car with plumes of black smoke out the exhaust that was hanging around our local area. Sure enough he got picked up. And sent for another test, which it failed. The 2nd fine is much bigger than the first. Put his car off the road for some time until he payed it, and was a contributing factor in shutting down those parties.

But it doesn’t end there.

Same neighbour’s kid, several months after the drunken parties stopped. Gets himself a Honda integra. Fits a turbo timer, despite not being a turbo….gets some horrible stuffed up tune and a monstrous exhaust that makes it go “buck buck buck buck” at idle, rather loudly - almost, but not quite a backfire. He’d come home from the nightclub at 3am, park it with “doof doof doof” subwoofers pumping, on top of the horrible exhaust noise, and this would run on for 15 minutes. He’d go all the way to the back of the property to bed (in the converted separate garage) oblivious to the disturbance he was causing. I go out one night when he pulls up, questioned the stupidity of a completely unnecessary timer, and asked him to turn it off to stop the unnecessary noise. He responds with “how does get F’d sound?”

So the next morning at 8am (just into council noise permissions) I started drilling the old concrete shed slab on my property, right beside his garage, with the rotary hammer drill. Then I ran the angle grinder up & down some old wrought iron. He banged on the fence several times, but I couldn’t hear him over the lawn mower revving away beside me, the loud music coming from my new work shed, and the earmuffs on my head. The following weekend he did the same, but I was prepared. I’d borrowed a demolition hammer to complete the removal of that slab I wanted gone. Not only did he get rudely awaken at 8am from noise, I would have just about rocked him out of bed.

Although satisfying on my part, and I did need to remove that old concrete slab, it still didn’t stop him.

My bedroom was right beside his driveway, and one night just after the 15 minute ritual, I heard some noise. Looked out the blinds and saw my neighbour from across the street sneaking back over to his house, tossing something into the skip bin on his lawn (they were getting demolition and building work done). Some 12 hours later, 3pm Sunday arvo, turbo timer kid is cranking the starter in his Honda, but it refused to fire up. He ran the battery down to the point where it would only click. I go out to get in my car to leave, and he asks me for a jump. I reminded him of the last words he said to me, and repeated them back to him. “How does G.F sound?” Got in my car and drove off.

Came home about an hour later, and sat with my neighbour across the street having a late Sunday afternoon beer on his upstairs balcony. We’re watching turbo timer kid looking aimlessly under the bonnet of the Honda, willing it into firing, but to no avail. It was then I spotted the yellow foam filling the drain pipe posing as an exhaust, and it was firmly set. I looked down into the neighbour’s skip, spotted the can, and put 2+2 together. I asked my neighbour if he knew how obvious the can of expanding foam was, right on the top of his skip bin, and he just grinned, saying it could be any of the neighbours, and how would he prove it.

Eventually the kid’s parents come home, as they usually did every Sunday evening, and the dead Honda is blocking the driveway. His father goes to look, and scratches his head too. The boy and his father pushed the Honda across onto the grass, reversed the family SUV in, then pushed the Honda back, and hooked up the jumper leads. After several tries, it still wouldn’t fire. We went downstairs & called his father over. Again, we told him the kid was annoying the neighbours. Father still claimed his son was an angel. Until we told him to look in the skip at the empty can, and then in his son’s exhaust. After 15 minutes of digging the foam out, the car finally started, and the parents finally believed the neighbours. Kid was made to apologise to every neighbour nearby. Finally we had peace in the neighbourhood on weekends again.

Some of my actions, and those of my neighbours, might have been overly petty, but when you have a severe lack of sleep caused by morons, sensible judgment gets clouded way too easily.