Our refugee story, part two

So we left you with us in the house, trying to digest the aftermath of a verbal assault by our neighbour's brother.

The first question was whether to wait for our real estate agents to get back to us before going to the police. The next question was where we were going to spend the night.

The second bit was relatively easy: we stayed at Althea's on the night and installed Jasper there, and then moved in with our friend Janine who had just had her own difficult time getting rid of a flatmate/tenant who wasn't paying her rent.

The first bit was more difficult. If we told the police, we'd immediately be escalating the situation with this guy who had given us to understand that we ought to be scared of him. In addition, there was a question mark about what the police would actually be able to do; an Apprehended Violence Order, similar to an Asbo, could be used, but that was assuming that we were actually able to get it from the courts. However, the confrontation meant that neither Kate nor I was particularly keen to remain in the house, especially as Kate would be working from home; she certainly wasn't going to feel comfortable being at home with the french windows open, or indeed going out into the garden if this guy was likely to be around. That meant that we were going to want to move out, and we would do well to lodge our complaint with the police as soon as possible.



So we went to Bondi police station and were dealt with by a genuinely helpful and professional police officer; she explained that we would need the guy's name to get an AVO, and that they would send round a police car to the house so that we could get our stuff and to try to get a name out of our neighbour. About halfway through the process of giving a statement, we had second thoughts about whether we wanted the police to go round there tonight, or whether we would wait till we could speak to the real estate agents the next morning before letting our neighbours on that we were onto them. But at that stage it was too late: the car was round there already.

When we got there after giving our statement we discovered that our misgivings about immediate police contact had been correct. The officer who had stopped round at our house had spent the past 20 minutes flirting with our neighbour and was now keen to get back to the station for his dinner; he'd already made up his mind that the situation was our fault and our neighbour was blameless. I spoke to him and our neighbour while Kate got some things together in the flat.

"Did you manage to get his name?" I asked the police officer.

"I hardly know him," our neighbour interjected.

"She said he was called Peter," he said, looking away from me.

"Don't you have a surname?"

"She doesn't know," he said.

"I've only met him a couple of times."

"What do you mean? He's your brother."

"No he isn't."

"Well your son described him as 'uncle' and he described you as his family."

"He described him as 'uncle' because that's how he describes older men. It's a mark of respect." (This could have been believable if they were indigenous, but the whole family were very white, very English)

At this point the police officer interjected to back her up. "You see?" he said.

I was feeling I wasn't likely to get anywhere with this cop.

"Why do you have a problem with her?" he asked.

"Because his brother was letting their Staffordshire bull terriers run around the garden and come into our house."

"Oh but those dogs wouldn't do any harm," she said. "One of them's about ten years old."

"So you don't know the guy's surname but you know how old his dog is?" I protested to the police officer.

He looked away again. "Why are you making such an issue of this?" he said.

"Because her brother threatened to set dogs on us."

The cop started looking away. "I've got to go now," he said.

"Well can you stay here until we've got our stuff?"

"I'm not here as your personal security guard," he answered sourly.

So that was that. We got the cat, headed to Althea's, and haven't slept there since. I've gone back a few times to collect things and the post. As we couldn't get a name for the guy, we couldn't file a proper AVO; we've subsequently got advice from friends that it's for the best that we didn't, as the whole situation can deteriorate and end up even worse when you do manage to get one. We've been in temporary refugee camp with our wonderful friend Janine for the past fortnight, and Jasper has been in a separate holding camp chez Althea. And after an agony of househunting, we're going to move into a new place on Tuesday. Yay!