| Of neighbours good and bad |
[Feb. 22nd, 2004|01:42 am] |
Well, I've got knuckles that are bruised like a boxer's now, although on the plus side I've met a couple of my neighbours for the first time and they seem like pleasant people.
An explanation: our flats attract a lot of airline crew members - stewardesses and the like - because of the proximity to the airport. They only tend to stay a few months, a year at most, before moving on and even when they're here they're not very often *here*, if you see what I mean.
There's one particular flat (on the far side from us) where the current crop of trolly dollies appear to be a right bunch of wombats, much given to having 4am screaming matches in the gardens under everyone's windows, and coming back from a flight with all their friends and cranking the music up, whatever time of the day or night it happens to be.
Tonight they picked midnight to kick off. I went over to check which flat the bassline was coming from and found a bloke from one of the other flats doing the same thing. I'd never spoken to him before, but we found common cause and introduced ourselves. Steven, his name was. We decided between ourselves to wait until half past before intervening to see if it stopped on its own. Neither of us thought it was likely to.
By 20 past it was getting louder and the chap in the flat above, who's in his 80s and half-deaf, had been woken up - I could see him blundering sleepily around his flat through the window. I went to call for Steven, met his heavily-pregnant wife while he was grabbing a pullover, and we paid our lovely neighbours a little visit.
You're maybe thinking from this that I ended up with bruised knuckles from some fundamental disagreement on the aesthetics of loud music, during which tempers were lost. Not so. In order to disagree with someone, they have to answer the door. I knocked - no answer, just some shouted arguments. Steven knocked, louder - again no reply, unless you count turning the music up an answer. I have no idea what the track was, but it featured a young woman with a dreamy voice talking about a use for her mouth that would shock her parents and delight her boyfriend...
It was my turn to knock again and I did so, repeatedly and loudly, until it hurt. Maybe 20 times, on glass. Heavily and monotonously. I thought the pane would give way, but the revellers cracked first. The music cut out and the door was answered by a girl with a baffled and slightly aggrieved look on her face. It's difficult to adequately describe her, but imagine ![[info]](http://piktures.deadjournal.com/userinfo.gif) sange's face stretched in PhotoShop until it took on the features of a slack-jawed, knackered old racehorse while still retaining the hair and eyes of our favourite blonde bombshell. It was very disconcerting, although not as disconcerting as the girl's obvious stupidity - she seemed unable to grasp that music loud enough to wake the dead would also, in fact, wake the neighbours.
Anyway, they turned it off. It's an hour later, and it's on again and I can just about hear it if I stop typing and listen. We've e-mailed the managing agents of the flats, and spoken to the environmental health emergency team who are going to write to them.
And while I've been typing my knuckles, which were swollen and purple from the glass, have subsided and are now merely pink and somewhat dented. They're going to hurt like hell in the morning though. |
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| To astrofiammante |
[Feb. 22nd, 2004|07:43 pm] |
Happy anniversary :o)
13 years... crikey.
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| Unbelievable |
[Feb. 22nd, 2004|11:38 pm] |
Last night's idiots are at it again... |
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