“I’m sorry madam, but you’ll have to breath into this breathalyser,” said the police officer with a look of tired resignation on his face.

He’d stopped me at the end of our road in Norwich for drink driving and I could see the curtains moving as our next door neighbours took a peek.

I knew they were having a right giggle at my expense.

“We’ve had a phone call and you’ve been accused of being over the drink drive limit,” he went on. “When was the last time you had a drink?” he asked as I got out of the car

“Fifteen years ago,” I fired back, “That’s how long I’ve been tea total unless you count the coke I had ten minutes ago with my daughter.”

He knew as well as I did it was a malicious call and who was likely to be responsible.

By then it seemed like everyone in Norwich knew we were at war with the Mick and Patricia Feeney, our next door neighbours.

I told him it was the neighbours and the latest salvo in the six year hate campaign they had been waging against me and my husband Fred.

I passed the breath test and when I got home minutes later I could hear them laughing next door.

Mick had a big grin on his face and was flicking V signs at me through the window as I got out of the car. Then they started playing  the pop song Relight My Fire – something they did to wind me up ever since there had been a fire in their front garden. They seemed to think it was funny.

But it wasn’t funny. When I got home that day last year  (2006) and told Fred (pictured above) what had happened he was distraught. I knew he couldn’t take much more.

He hasn’t been well for a few years and retired early from his job as a hospital porter with back problems and arthritis.

He has also had a mild stroke, suffers from diabetes and has a bronchial condition.

The stress we were getting from the Feeneys whose semi adjoined ours was the last thing he needed.

But it had all been so different when we moved into our three-bedroom council house in Hellesdon Close in 2001. In the end it became more like Hell Close.

At first we got on with Mick, 42, (pictured left) and Patricia, 43. Pat, (pictured below) as I called her then,  had come round with a bottle of wine and everything was fine.

It was meant to be our dream home. Fred and I have both been married before and this was a fresh start for both of us. Fred ploughed £20,000 of his retirement money and savings into landscaping the garden and doing up the house with new carpets, kitchen and other fittings.

We should have realised from the off that something was wrong when the Feeney’s were drinking Champagne in their front garden the day we moved in and the old tenants moved out.

“Glad to see the back of them,” Mick said. “They were nothing but trouble.” We didn’t think too much about it at the time.

They had moved to Norwich from Liverpool and neither of them seemed to work, though I know Mick is a carer for their disabled son Shane who is now aged 13.

They have two other children, April, 15, and Kelly, 11,  and we all got on okay at first.  I even used to give their kids pocket money.

Then one day in the summer of 2002 Kelly, who must have been about five at the time, and April, who was about ten, were playing up with the garden hose while I was sunbathing in the back garden.

I went round to have a word with Mick and it all kicked off.

I don’t know if he had been drinking but he started saying I had never liked the kids. He was ranting and raving at me and I got scared. He accused me of reporting him to the council for leaving his kids home alone.

I hadn’t done any such thing but he wouldn’t listen to reason. Then he said he was going to report our two dogs – our Labradors Connor and TJ - for being a nuisance.

That was the start of it. It turned out he had been reported to the council over the kids by someone else in the Close.

After that they started tormenting us with that song Who Let The Dogs Out? They played it really loud when we got home from walking the dogs.

Fred tried to explain we hadn’t reported them to the council but they wouldn’t listen.

“Right that’s it,” said Fred. I’m going to keep a diary of all the stuff they do and keep Norwich City Council informed. I won’t be beaten by them.”

I agreed what Fred was doing was right. I didn’t want him getting involved with fisty cuffs what with his medical problems.

And the diary entries came thick and fast.

Mick and Pat argued a lot which was bad enough, but then on August 20, 2003, I woke up in the middle of the night and looked out of the bedroom window to see the Feeney’s hedge on fire. I called 999 and ran outside – half the street were up by then – and the next thing I know Pat is standing in front of me accusing me of torching her hedge.

“You’re crazy,” I told her and then she punched me above my left breast. I was stunned. I couldn’t make sense of these crazy people anymore.

The brigade put the fire out and I reported her to the police. She was bound over to keep the peace but it didn’t make any difference.

After that they started playing Relight My Fire really loud to try and upset me.

By now Fred and I wanted them evicted. Every time we walked past there were abusive mumblings, they banged on the walls all the time, kicked over our wheelie bin and generally made our lives a misery. Sometimes Fred would fire nails in the tyres of our car.

Everyone in the street was fed up with them but Fred and I bore the brunt of it because we lived right next door.

Fred started videoing them to build up a dossier of evidence to go with his diary and there was a petition from the whole street that went in to the council.

But behind his determination to get them evicted, Fred was cracking up and would often break down in tears.

But worse was to come.

We were getting a lot of feedback from the Anti Social Behaviour Team at Norwich City Council, who Fred was in regular contact with.

The team leader Kim Lewis informed Fred in 2005 that an allegation had been made to police that Fred was a paedophile.

The Feeneys had said the security cameras Fred had mounted at the front and back were pointing at his garden and that Fred was filming his children.

Fred broke down in tears. Allegations like that have to be taken seriously by the authorities. Questions were asked and it was very distressing for Fred even though nothing ever came of it.

Later that year we had a visit from two other officials from Norwich City Council.

“Hello Mr and Mrs Dyker,” they said on the doorstep. “Do you mind telling us where the bodies are hidden?”

Fred and I were dumbfounded. “What are you on about,” Fred asked.

“Apparently an allegation has been made you are running an illegal funeral parlour in your house and we’ve come to investigate.”

Fred and I looked at each other and we both knew if we didn’t laugh we’d cry.

“It’s the Feeneys again,” we said and the men from the council gave us a look which seemed to agree.

Fred told them I had two angels on the living room wall that made the place look like an undertakers, but that was as far as it went.

They said they knew it was a waste of time but since an allegation had been made they would have to check for bodies.

They looked through the cupboards and the wardrobe for corpses and embalming fluid. The whole thing was surreal.

By now the Feeneys were well known to the local police and the council and we thought their desperate allegations were a sign we were winning the war.

It seemed like everyone knew they were trouble but it didn’t stop them making allegations against Fred.

Last year (2006) Fred was talking to the local police constable – a regular thing by now.

“Apparently you are the Mr Big in Norwich for class A drugs,” he told Fred.

“An allegation has been made you are a drug dealer.”

By now Fred and I took it all with a pinch of salt. But there was a serious side to because the police said it would have to go on file.

“I don’t know whether to laugh or cry anymore,” Fred told me.

He was putting on a brave face but I knew it was getting to him.

In August of that year Fred videoed Mr Feeney hosing down our windows for no reason at all. Fred added it to the dossier of evidence.

It was just crazy behaviour pure and simple.

Fred had built up so much evidence against the Feeneys on anti-social behaviour grounds the council said it would go to court.

But then in August last year (2006) we were awoken in the middle of the night again by  a fire – only this time it was much worse.

The Feeneys were on holiday and their house was on fire and it was spreading across the roof to ours.

Fred was a hero that night and got us all out.  My daughter Kerrie, 22, from my first marriage, and her 12-month-old baby Dayton, were staying with us and Fred ushered us all, and the dogs, into the garden.

The Feeney’s house was gutted and the roof of ours was destroyed by fire. The rest of our house was ruined by water needed to douse the fire in the roof.

The Feeneys moved into temporary accommodation elsewhere in Norwich and Fred and I were re-housed in a flat in our road until repairs are done to our house.

Nobody knows what caused the fire but the police are treating it as arson.

Finally in February  this year (2007) Norwich County Court issued an anti social behaviour order – an Asbo – forcing the Feeneys, to sell up and move on.

Under the order they are banned from harassing and intimidating, threatening or assaulting residents or visitors to Hellesdon Close. They are also banned from kicking over rubbish bins and making false allegations against residents or visitors.

The order will remain in place until the Feeneys move on and if they break it they face prison.

It came out in court that the Feeneys had left a trail of harassment and anti social behaviour behind them. They had been under investigation by the authorities in Bradford but moved before the council could act.

Norwich City Council took the case to court using Fred’s six year’s of evidence and now Fred has been nominated by the council for a Home Office award for fighting anti social behaviour. I’m so proud of him because he never gave in and never sank to their level.

In the end we won the war with the Feeneys by doing things the right way and hopefully we will soon be back in our dream home and we’ve got our fingers crossed our new neighbours will be nice.

But for six years the Feeneys ruined our lives.

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