Confinement, or the opportunity to forge ties of mutual aid and solidarity with its neighbors. On social networks, we see flourishing testimonies of people exchanging pastries, certificates of outings or proposing to the elderly to go shopping. But not everyone is so well off. Because confinement is also synonymous with promiscuity. And, when the walls are thin, the sympathy of the beginnings can quickly turn into a neighborhood war.
During the first days, Caroline and her companion amused themselves by hearing the antics of their neighbors in their landing, in their apartment in Valenciennes. But after more than a week of confinement, "it's clearly getting on our nerves," she admits. “We hear them doing their business several times a day. Loudly. Often after what appears to be a chase. We hear them running, shouting, laughing… ”
In this situation, it is difficult to knock on the door asking them to make less noise. "We don't really know how to tell them ... Or if they would answer if we knocked on their door," she jokes. Fortunately, the couple have no children to whom they have to explain what "the neighbors' activities" consist of.
"They only have to do that, to get their dog out!" "
Chez Léa, 22, it is not so much the neighbors who are the problem as their dog. "They let him urinate on the railing of their balcony and it lands directly on mine," she complains. A problem that does not date from confinement, admits the young woman, but which takes on a whole new magnitude now that the saleswoman spends all her days at home. "Before, I thought it only happened from time to time. But since confinement, I realize that it is daily, and even several times a day! "
She was especially more inclined to find excuses for the deviations of the dog and its owners: "Before, I was a little more lax, I told myself that the dog locked up, with them who work all day long, well it can happen " But now that his owners are confined to their house all day ... "They only have to do that, to take out their dog! She exclaims. "Especially since we are in a closed residence with green spaces".
Tuesday morning was the time too many: Lea decided to contact her trustee, after several warnings to her neighbors above. Because for her, the situation is really unbearable: "I can no longer open my bedroom window, otherwise it spurts inside. And, with the sun, the smell of urine comes out even more, no matter how often I clean, ”she despairs. During confinement, it is a heartbreak for the young woman not to be able to enjoy her little balcony in the sun. The case is now in the hands of the owner of the upper apartment, with supporting evidence.
A barking concert every day
A remedy that Theo does not have against his four-legged neighbors, to his chagrin. This 19-year-old computer student returned to his parents' house near Avignon, the time of confinement. But in their subdivision, seven of the eleven neighbors have a dog. "You imagine when there is one who barks, it's the fanfare throughout the neighborhood," he quips. Sometimes the concert lasts up to five hours during the day. "We get used to it," he says resignedly.
To revise your lessons, it's closed window and headphones screwed on your ears, with music. But to record on the guitar, impossible: "I have a YouTube channel where I publish everything I create on the guitar, explains Théo. Containment is the best opportunity to fill it up completely. ” Except "we hear the barking in the microphone ...", he says, exasperated. Theo therefore has to wait 20 hours to register, when the neighborhood becomes calm again.
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But he does not really want to go to parliament with his neighbors, to try to solve the problem. Especially since one of the dogs that barks the most is a Doberman, whose owner scares him "a little bit," admits Théo.
"The doors slam, the neighbors walk in heels"
Besides, going to talk to the neighbors is not always the solution. Laurine, 21, knows something about it. Since the start of confinement, this Plessis-Bouchard student has been beset by the noises of the neighbors of her building. “The children run, cry, jump. Some take advantage of it to do work all day. The doors slam, the neighbors walk in heels ... ”Difficult under these conditions to concentrate to study.
And when his father went to the neighbors above to ask them to make less noise with their shoes, he was not very well received. "One of them apologized, but the other was very rude and replied sharply that she was doing what she wanted at home," says Laurine.
When the noise becomes really annoying, the student puts on earplugs. Otherwise, she tries to ignore it and "takes her patience." Courage, only a few days before the end of confinement ... In theory.