Smoking….
Ok, so here’s the deal - we live in a very small house with our bedroom window just above our neighbours garden. Our houses are mirror immages, so although our lounge doors open into our garden, here’s are just the otherside of the hedge - less then 2 meters from us.
Now… I don’t like to be considered a moaner or a do gooder, but there are some things that are just plain rude. We’ve recently moved in here, and being a small house, we like to have the bedroom windows open at night to let the air circulate. From the first week onwards I began to get more and more sick, until I was developing asthma each night - which was keeping me and my partner awake for hours. My eczema is back with a vengence, I’ve had a constant sore throat and my eyes itch so much i’ve scraped off the skin and they now hurt to close, yet still continue to itch and weep.
This had been going on 8 weeks when I suddenly discovered that our neighbour likes to go outside late at night on the phone and smoke ciggies. How lovely. I am heavily allergic to ciggie smoke, and as a result we can no longer have our bedroom window open.
But this doesn’t cure the problem, during the day I like to have the lounge doors open, that lead into the garden and it is becoming a choice between this and my problems getting worse, or trying to cure them in a not so good environment.
What can I do, I can not tell someone they can’t smoke in their own garden, yet here I am ill as hell and considering selling up and moving after only 9 weeks. Do I talk to her and see if there is some sort of compromise or what? When the law about working around smoke comes in, will it cover this, or do I not have a leg to stand on?
Is there anyone else out there who understands what it is like to live in a world where people don’t understand just how bad their nasty habbits can effect others?
June 21st, 2006 at 4:48 am
We were recently in a non smoking resturant late one evening, with only one other group present on another table. The owner approached us and asked if we minded (seeing how empty the resturant was) if someone from that group could smoke. We said we would prefer it if they didn’t as we were trying to enjoy our food. You should have seen the looks of disgust we got from the other table when the owner said that they couldn’t smoke!
Could they not understand why we said said no?
Roll on the new smoking ban I say.
June 25th, 2006 at 6:18 pm
I smoke but in California there is so many laws about where you can’t smoke, I’m used to being careful where and around whom I light up. When going to Amsterdam, I realized just how differet things are in Europe. People smoke anywhere, anytime … and a lot more than in Cali. Maybe you should move there
Mike