Story Archive

Cantankerous Copper

Joe Hayes, 60, has lived in his home in Uddingston, Lanarkshire, for 28 years, and has had trouble with a neighbor who moved in four years ago. That came to a head when police knocked on his door. “The officers who came round were laughing about it,” he says, “but said in all seriousness, if I didn’t move the gnome, they would charge me.” The gnome? “I had a pair of them sitting on plant pots. One of them is looking through a set of binoculars and the other one is showing his bum.” Yes, “they were facing into my next-door neighbor’s garden, but it is ridiculous that the police would come out for something like that.” The neighbor — a former policeman himself — says that the 8" tall, 4-pound (US$6) figure with its pants down “is putting fear and alarm into me, my wife and my young children.” His children are 11 and 17 years old. Hayes, a taxi driver, doesn’t want trouble: he’s selling the gnome. (RC/Glasgow Daily Record) ...To the neighbor on the other side.