To expect that if a retired couple dont want to listen to children playing...

pogs the young families are tending to give him a wide berth, his wife just smiles and looks very embarrassed by it all, they do have Grandchildren so its not that he has no immediate contact with children.
Yes the dark night are closing in on us again so as you say it wont be a problem for much longer but a year on and he will have to put up with them all being a year older.

Directly across the Thames from us is a rowing club and every so often they have competition days, usually on a Sunday when we are woken about 8 am by a booming voice over a megaphone and the theme of Hawaii Five O played at what seems 10 minute intervals all day until about 5 pm.

baNANA

DaDaDaDaDaDaa DaDaDaDaDaa

Just to put the tune into your head before bedtime. Ha Ha

POGS, forgot to mention right next door to rowing club is a pub and their throwing out tune is YMCA so that's in my head at bedtime!

Buy some ear plugs and pop them in his letter box glass

The Old Grump who lived next to my kids primary school regularly used to appear at 'home time' with a pot of white gloss paint and start painting his fence as the children headed home past his precious garden!

baNANA

Blimey I bet you have some fun. Any houses for sale?

You live by a river, next door to a pub and opposite a rowing club. Don't tell me you have a 4 star resaurant and a heli pad nearby. Sounds fab.

Not a heli pad I'm afraid, it's only a town house and our grounds are communal, but do have some slightly bonkers neighbours who during one of the very hot summers a couple of years ago decided to swim across the river, fully clothed, to the pub the other side and then on reaching that side couldn't get up the bank, and had to be hauled up by some of the kindly patrons in the pub garden. Some people will go to great lengths (pardon the pun) to visit their local! Personally I wouldn't put my big toe in the river, it being the Thames and noted for Weils Disease, still takes all sorts!

baNANANA

Those pesky rats.

Glass. Perhaps your D.D. could ship her misery old neighbour off to baNANANA. Show him how to live life again.

pogs I am sure my DD will be all for it don't know how baNANA will take it.

POGS I would point that not all my neighbours are loads of fun, some of them could be described as miserable old gits as per the old grouch I previously mentioned who tired to confiscate some leaves from a group of four year olds. When we first moved here my younger son who was about 11 at the time was told ball games were not allowed in the grounds when he was playing a racquet game with a friend to which he replied "a shuttlecock is not a ball!" this was not well received by the aforementioned git. I myself was also told off for feeding the ducks by another like minded elderly person, who told me there was no nutritional value in bread, so I haven't touched it since!

baNANA Glass

That's just cocked the job up then. Night.

I have thought for a few days there was alot of strange activity going on but the removal van is here and they are shipping out, do you think the old grump has read this thread

Yes!! Another resounding success for Gransnet Power!

Gn has done it again

Result!!

I never had children but love the sound of children playing. Part of me is looking forward to snow as the village children play in the field next to my house with their toboggans. The last time we had deep snow, I stepped into my garden and ended up having a snowball fight with some of them! Got back indoors, cold and wet but laughing!

Barrow it keeps you young doesn't it nothing like a snowball fight to make you smile.

Well done GNers we can certainly put the curse on can't we.

Yeah. That'll be it Glass.

More like the kids have got too much for 'em.

Our last house was a tall solidly built three storey Victorian semi. Our children occupied the bedrooms on the top floor and used to compete to raise the volume of their own individual choice of music to a level where it drowned out the other - and deafened everybody else in the house.

I begged the neighbours to complain about the noise but all they said was that as the walls were so thick and they didnt use their attic bedrooms there had no problem with the music!

differant noises for different folks. I can live with children playing outside (unless they are SCREAMING) but hate the noise of traffic. So would not live on a main road and opt to live down a muddy track so there is only my neighbour and the odd postie or tractor using it.

That sort of set-up, where the houses form a natural little open area is designed especially for young families....hells teef where are children suppposed to play safetly?

We had our grandchildren to live with us for 3 years in our flat {optimistically we had downsized}.If they were noisy we woud get phone calls from the older couple downstairs. The flats were not retirement ones . Children are part of life. How great it is to have moved back to a house with them and they can make as much noise as possible.... until I get fed up with the noise that is.