[Ian Robinson]

Know how you feel.

I've an idiot neighbour too and have not been able to use my backyard for several months since he had his house clad with plastic pretend timber crap and replaced all his lights with those dammed low power high wattage fluorescent light globes (for the life of me I can understand why he needs 100 W fluoro globes burning 24hr/day 7days/week none stop on the outside of his house.

Can't talk with him, he's crazy , literally !!! he's a manic depressive skitzo alcoholic drug addict ( uses pot and anyone's guess what else since he came into an inheritance ). My wife and I have had an AVO on him for 2 years now since he really flipped early one morning and made threats to put bricks through our windows and to kill us - he go into his head we'd (me in particular) had dobbed him in to the cops for dealing drugs locally to the local kids .... wrong .... but if I haf known I would have without a moment's hesitation.

He's been flipping out continuously for months now and has been committed a couple of times by the local mobile thrinks, gets let out comes back home and makes up for lost time.

Like living next door to a mad house .... scares my wife and she wont go outsids when he's flipping out .... moving house is not an option , and why should we ? (We've been her for 27 years and he has only been a neighbour for about 10 years and I worked hard to pay for my home, where as his mum bought the house for him and furnished it for him.)

Anyway , I wound up putting together a letter threatening him with legal action if he didn't turn off his outside lights at night , posted it to him anomously - made out in it that it was letter from several of his immediate neighbours ( I know they are all pissed with his nocturnal lighting too as the lights are very bright and shine right into their houses - it's a privacy thing).

This had the desired effect - and last time he was taken away - ie last time he was flipping out all night - made sure his back light wont come back on - a gaff hook on a long cane pole was handy.

So the last month or so I've had my nice backyard back at night , too bad I've not had time to rebuild my 10" newt OTA and the weather has been pretty ordinary at night. Don't know how long that is going to last.

He breached another neighbour's AVO a couple of months back , and with a bit of luck he will be going away on a compulsory government funded holiday for while , once the magistrate gets jacked with adjurning the hearing (been adjurned 6 times) , my application for another 12 month extension on our AVO has been adjurned too .... he's been in Watt Street and the cops haven't been able to serve him with a warrant to appear. I'm betting this is a strategy devised by his solicitor.