Curtain Twitcher

I don't know if it counts as curtain twitching seeing as they'd come to see me. However, there wasn't an appropriate moment to ask for a group portrait.

We've had a leak of dirty water at the front of the house since August. In December it was finally pinpointed as coming from my neighbours' house, but during this Scottish Water managed to flood their kitchen, and not clear the block. After calming down, my neighbours did as requested by Scottish Water and got a private company out to deal with it. Mentioning no names (but they're big in the drain-unblocking world), these guys completely failed to find the blocked drain, and furthermore told my neighbours the water wasn't coming from their house. Also they made them have all their steps dug up and didn't find any problem underneath.

Everybody was highly stressed and confused, and the water is still leaking.

I have been persisting with Scottish Water on the grounds that we still aren't clear where it is coming, and they have to prove it's not them. I finally got them to agree to come round this morning.
We also phoned Environmental Health to see if they could do anything, and they said to ring them back with the details.

So to my surprise this morning I saw through the window at least six people from Scottish Water and a council van with two Environmental Health officers, all ready to serve a statutory notice on my neighbours. I ran out to intervene because I did not want her to have a heart attack. Luckily they were out (at the doctors!) so we managed to get the EH people to go away. By the time the neighbours got back Scottish Water had a good chat with them, found the block and (hopefully) cleared it this time....
Phew.

In the meantime, I also had a damp proof specialist checking my house, who said the report I was shown (done on behalf of famous building company with whom we are trying to do a part-exchange deal on a new house) which said basically the house is falling down, is largely guff. Could it be in their interests to make us think our house is worth less than it is??!
He was somewhat bemused by all the activity. Alexander loved it.

BTW the chimney and roof have also been mended this week. Could it be a new dawn for us?!