sarahellenwhitney and everybody You are all WONDERFUL! thank you so much.
I did report to the Police but that was after his second incident a few days later that week- breaking my gate, coming into my garden and shouting the odds, plus my going to his daughter and her intended who live in the house next door and the daughter proceeded to shout abuse at me with sarcasm and tell the most monstrous lies and make threats to make holes in my fence.
I keep my deeds at my Solicitor's so I phoned and asked her to read them out. She advised I reported it to the Police who should log it. It is my fence and it is very old. The father has pulled ivy off it which grows from their side and has killed trees, and in so doing has damaged the fence. I'm not that fazed about that as the fence is old, but I have told them I can't replace it this year and it is still serviceable. My pyracantha does not block their light, the light comes from their side anyway. It does not overhang their garden, unlike about four ugly weed-like plants that come into my garden from theirs.
The problem is, the father has been treated for cancer in 2 places and the daughter told me, some months ago (February?) he had stopped treatment because the 2 Consultants "could not decide who was going to operate first". I am a retired Neuropsychologist. I had a colleague who had a case where a man stopped his treatment and stopped scans, developed a secondary brain tumour and killed another young man in a car crash. The other possibility for brain-behaviour involvement in cancer could be use of steroids. With this in mind, I had not called the Police about the father.
I had gone to the neighbours that evening. He has a very adult daughter who is an Accountant at the large hospital nearby, and very self-confident. I went to ask, gently, if her dad was having check-ups. Her first words, because her Intended came to the door, shouted over his head and before I could begin, were, "I've dealt with that, it's all sorted. I've been on the phone to dad, that's all sorted. You can go." I did note she did not say "I'm sorry dad broke your gate." Her father said he'd mend the gate by putting a bit of extra wood on it behind where the bolt slides in, that wasn't there before, saying how badly made it was and being so rude about everything demanding a hammer etc.. I did not want her father on my premises or to do a shambolic job on my gate which was made by a qualified Carpenter. When talking to his daughter and her intended, I was extremely polite and tactful and played down her father's aggressive behaviour and his kicking the gate and shouting abuse. In fact I went into my old professional mode. I did not mention any possibilities of brain involvement until much later on when she was saying her father never shouts and was insisting he is gentle and peaceful. Actually I have heard him shouting twice before, over a year or more ago. She was furious with me for insisting on talking about the incidents and attacked me verbally saying horrendous and untruthful things about me. In fact, she flew into a rage just like her father. I would say, I have seen this in the clinic and more often we hear about it, as we say "from the victims of these people" who all share a cluster of personality disorders with overlapping symptoms and include aggressiveness, including passive aggression, bullying, lying, violent temper outbursts, sarcasm, belittling people, manipulativeness etc.
It was horrendous!
As people who worked with brain-injured people, we were told that, having the benefit of our knowledge, should we ever suspect a brain event underlying a person's behaviour, we have a duty to make that person safe and hence other people safe because that person might, like the person I mentioned before, drive a car, or hurt others somehow or be responsible for children etc. This duty doesn't stop because we retire. So my duty was to try and see that he went to a doctor and somehow was assessed, preferably with a brain scan. That would have been done anyway if he were going routinely to the hospital and I was praying that he was, yet under the impression that he had walked out.
Next, the Police. Yep, useless. Two turned up, detectives or else they can't afford uniforms. Didn't show me their ID! Listened but couldn't follow my explanation. My bit about fears about his brain and cancer threw them. Then the older one, who was minding the young girl said, "What would you like us to do?" They would have gone to see the neighbours but they were out at work. They said they would "Log it". He, older Plod, said I should write to neighbours explaining the facts since she had told a lot of lies especially about the fence. I said I'd done a preparatory letter. He read it and said it was good, very unprovocative, factual etc.
There is another instalment I will give later (can't keep writing...)
Thank you so much everyone!
P.S, My clinical feeling is that the cancer and brain involvement are less likely to have been the influence of his behaviour (he was so fit and well and energetic) and the cause for such aggression was most likely that he is an aggressive nasty man who thinks he can make people do whatever he says!
