Forever Amber

Their Parents Must Be So Proud

Today Terry and I didn't have time to go to the gym, so I decided to do my bit for the ol' waistline by going out for a run around the streets of the Ghetto.

Within ten minutes of leaving the house I was invited to "get my boobies out". About thirty seconds later I was called a "ho" (No, I didn't obey the first command, in case you're wondering if that was why...). And OK, both of these comments came from pre-teens, but seriously: the fact that I can't even go for a walk run within a few hundred metres of my own front door without being verbally abused by kids who clearly aren't mature enough to be allowed out in public without a minder is pretty disgusting to me. Seriously.

On the plus side, though, at least I can give up running now.

There Goes the Neighbourhood

Summer. We've got it. And I know I whine incessantly about the cold when we don't got it, and it really is very lovely to be able to leave the house without the ol' snowsuit, but God, summer doesn't half get the crazies out.

For instance:

At the football pitch I pass when walking the dog:

A gang of teenagers racing two cars (ACTUAL cars, not toy ones, by the way. Like, real, live cars. That people can travel in.) around the grass pitch (Cars! On the grass! Where children were playing!) and blaring out music at top volume as they went.

In front of the pub I passed not two minutes later:

A gentleman who looked to be in his sixties, wearing nothing but what looked like a pair of boxer shorts, Doc Marten boots and a smile. In MAY. In SCOTLAND. I mean, it's warm, but it's not that freaking warm, people... (Actually, call me old fashioned, but I don't think it's EVER warm enough for boxer shorts in public. Am I wrong?)

From the house I passed one minute after THAT:

Music blaring at the sound level commonly known as "louder than hell".

At the ice cream van parked in our street:

A small white dog barking hysterically at all of the children standing in line, almost as if said dog thought he was a WOLF and that, I dunno, he could frighten them all into handing over their ice creams or something?

At the local beauty spot we walked the dog in yesterday:

Two teenage boys shattering the silence of the pleasant, country meadow-thing with an MP3 player which was blaring music through speakers. SPEAKERS. Why do MP3 players come with speakers now? That's why God Apple made headphones, surely? And if I wanted to listen to a teenager's choice of music, I wouldn't drive all the way to the local beauty spot, you know? No, I'd just walk round the corner, to where they race their cars on the football pitch...

At the very steep hill in the middle of the aforementioned beauty spot:

A red haired girl sailing down the hillside on her ass, emitting a high pitched squealing noise as she went, much to the surprise of the two teenagers who were making out on the other side of the hill.

Oh no, wait: that last one was me. AND I hurt my wrist when I fell.

Ah well,  no one's perfect...

The Music of the Night

So, last night we did our usual "winding down from the weekend" thing: dinner, glass of wine, calling the police at midnight to complain about the EAR SPLITTING NOISE from people blasting out loud music from their houses... Just the usual, really.

This experience was slightly strange, though, for two reasons:

1. The music was coming from at least two streets away

2. It was Terry who finally flipped and and called the police about it, not me, Freaky Noise Hatin' Girl.

Being the party animals we are (Look, you try living in the Little House of Renovation Horrors and see how tired you are of an evening...), we had gone to bed at about midnight. Terry was settling Rubin down for the night, so it was I who heard the noise first. In fact, I heard it the second I walked into the bedroom.

THUMP! said the noise. THUMPTHUMPTHUMP! Then THUMP! it said again. Then it did that thing where it shut the hell up for a few minutes, making me think that maybe it was just a car stereo or something, and then THUMP! it said again.

Instantly, my head exploded.

Regular readers will not need me to explain to them how totally incandescent with rage excessive noise makes me. For the benefit of new readers: excessive noise makes me incandescent with rage. Seriously.

Well, I threw open the bedroom window and glared around the street, trying to work out where the THUMP! THUMP! of the booming baseline was coming from. It was at this point that I made my shocking discovery: the noise wasn't coming from our street at all. It was coming from some unspecified location far, far away - a distant galaxy perhaps - way the hell past our street and in the direction of the estate that lies beyond it.

Now, I know sound tends to carry at night, but in order to understand just how ear-splittingly loud this music would have to have been for us to have heard it from INSIDE OUR HOUSE  you have to know that there are no other streets really close to us. There's our house, then there's a row of houses opposite us, then there's a strip of freaking FORREST, which normally acts as a pretty good sound buffer, then there's a footpath, then there's the next door estate.

So, basically, this must have been one hell of a party is all I'm saying.

Anyway, I must have been even more tired than I realised, because rather than pacing the house hysterically for hours, ranting about how INCONSIDERATE and FREAKING STUPID other people are, I chose to rant hysterically for only about two minutes, before putting in my earplugs and trying to go to sleep. Which left Terry do deal with the onslaught of noise all by himself.

Now, Terry is a pretty placid person. Nothing really annoys him. Seriously, you could come and wash your car near our house any time with the stereo blaring, and Terry wouldn't bat an eyelid. I know this because most people do wash their cars with the stereos blaring. But Terry had just spent an entire week destroying and then recreating a kitchen with his bare hands, which is why it came to pass that I woke with a jolt some time later to hear him calling the police.

Yes, people, Terry had finally Had Enough. It was no more Mr Nice Guy for him. Sadly it was "No More Mr Nice Guy" for the police, either. The woman who answered the phone, you see, wanted to send someone round to our house to "assess the noise level". This person would call us first, she said. Did I mention that it was now about ONE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING? Well, it was. And we were not at all down with the idea of getting out of bed and sitting down with "noise assessors" in the middle of the night. I mean, what happened to the old method of dealing with loud parties, whereby the police would drive into the street in question, identify the source of the noise (which, given that we could hear it from MORE THAN TWO STREETS AND A FORREST AWAY, shouldn't have been the hardest job in the world, ya know?) and tell them to shut the hell up?  Seriously, the type of noise that can be heard from that far away is not the kind of noise that needs "assessing". It's the kind of noise that needs switching off. No?

Apparently not, though. We have no idea whether the police did go out to the noise makers, but the THUMP! THUMP! went on until about 1.30am in the morning. Which sucked. And this, my friends, is why everyone in the world should own ear plugs...

In slightly better news, I found my gym mojo - it was hiding underneath the kitchen sink. Latest crazy running time: 45 minutes. I am back in the game, people! (What is the game, though?)

Should we talk about the weather? Should we talk about the government?

It was one of those wild and windy nights last night: so windy, in fact, that Terry had to go out and weigh our rubbish bins down with rocks to stop them making another bid for freedom. It didn't really work. By this morning the bins were all huddled up against the back gate, like refugees awaiting freedom, and the wind was still blowing, and making an almighty racket, which actually kind of reminded me of that time workmen arrived in the street and proceeded to blast out music loud enough to be heard above the sound of their power tools (and also: in every room in our house).

(I mean, seriously, who does that? (Other than White Van Men, obviously). Who thinks to themselves, "Hey, I'd really like to listen to some music while I work with my power tools. I know! I'll just blast it out so that the whole street is forced to listen to it too! Because really, who cares that they don't want to listen to my music all the livelong day? As long as I'm happy, that's all that matters!" WHO THINKS LIKE THAT?

And I know that sometimes people like to have a bit of music while they work (The Seven Dwarves did, for sure), but there are lots of people who'd like to blast our music all day long, but who are just forced to accept that they can't do it without inconveniencing the people around them. I'm sure we'd all like to be able to go through life just doing whatever the hell we liked, with complete disregard for other people - I for one would like nothing better than to beat the ever-loving crap out of Patrick Kielty, for instance, but I don't just go and do it, do I? And not just because the restraining order makes it difficult for me to get within a few hundred metres of the fecker. No, I don't do it because it would be rather antisocial of me, and because IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT ME, and what I want. Oh no, wait: it totally is all about me, isn't it?

Anyway, my point is that it's a shame more people don't just stop and consider the people around them before indulging themselves in a spot of good old antisocial behaviour. It would make the world a much safer place for Patrick Kielty for one thing, and it would allow me to sleep later in the morning, without having to listen to someone else's music. Nope, still not over that, apparently.)

Now, where was I? Oh yeah: the wind. It was big and it was loud (oh, so loud!), but, weirdly, even although it knocked over The Brown Bin, and almost made The Black Bin disgorge all of its contents onto the driveway, it did nothing to shift the flattened Irn Bru can that's been lying on our front lawn for four weeks now. What's that about? I didn't even manage to take the dog for a walk, the weather was so wild, and I'm guessing that's why we returned home from the gym this afternoon to find two neat turds decorating the kitchen floor. So far, this whole "2008" thing isn't working out too well. I'd quite like the old year back again, thanks very much.

(Yes, I am now reduced to talking about the weather, like an Old Person. We can only hope I choke on a piece of steak or something soon, so that things can get back to normal around here...)

The Vigil, take 2

OK, let's try this again, shall we?

Tomorrow morning, Terry is going into hospital to have his fistula removed. Yes, just like he did last time, only this time we're hoping the operation will, you know, actually happen.

Now, clearly the fact that Terry is having an operation kind of sucks, and when I say it kind of sucks, I mean it kind of sucks for me. Terry is happy and relaxed at the prospect of having his fistula removed. I? Am On a Vigil. For real.

Tomorrow's Vigil starts at 8am. No, that's not a typo, that's 8am as in "an hour I barely knew existed". (I work from home, OK? I get lazy.) This is actually a good thing because the fact that his operation is so early means that he must be first in the queue (I mean, surely to God they don't do operations BEFORE 8am? God, I really hope the surgeon is a morning person... ) so, technically speaking, he shouldn't have to experience the long, tedious delays the NHS is so well known for. And I should be put out of my misery pretty quickly. Well, I hope so anyway.

So, yes, Vigil tomorrow, 8am. Are you with me?

*  *  *

In other news, I am now pretty sure that the man across the road is trying to steal my sanity. This guy washes his car every day. Every. Day.  Not only that, but he washes his car for an entire hour every day. Sometimes longer. Dude clearly has more time  on his hands than I do. Anyway, I'm sure you can guess what's coming here. When the man across the road washes his car (Every day! For an hour!) he rolls down the car windows and does the old "using the vehicle as a massive speaker system" thing. GOD.

My question is this: how should he die?

So, things aren't great in the 'hood, is what I'm trying to say here. Maybe I should buy a new house? One with soundproofing and no neighbours?  Or maybe I should just calm the hell down, hmmm?

Anyway: Vigil. Must concentrate on Vigil. Aaargh, hospital Vigil! Not good for hypochondriacs! Scary! Mmmm, wine.

The Mouse House, Part 2

Terry said no to the Habitrail idea. Instead, he went downstairs and pretty much ripped apart the kitchen in his bid to hermetically seal it against Clive and his little buddies - for yes, it seems that there is MORE THAN ONE OF THEM.

"They've been crapping all over the place," Terry told me, his face pale as he emerged from under the sink. "It's hard to imagine how one mouse could crap so much."

We looked at each other, light beginning to dawn. CLIVE IS NOT WORKING ALONE. The mice, they are taking over the world, folks, and they're starting with our house, in much the same way that when the neighbourhood kids start destroying the neighbourhood, they're always sure to do our garden first. Be good if we could maybe be first in line for something nice once in a while, hmmm?

So, knowing that what we're dealing with here is not one solitary, timid little mouse looking for a warm place to lay his head, but actually a whole hell-raisin' gang of them - probably on motorbikes - makes me feel a little bit less sympathetic towards them. Even more so given that, in order to try and deal with them, Terry has sawed up wood INSIDE THE KITCHEN, and it was just last night that I doused that place with bleach and picked up all the crumbs one by one. Now I'll have to do it ALL OVER AGAIN, and it's like, "Get out of my house, Clive, you little b*****d, ok?" These are some bad-ass mice we're dealing with here, and also, they ate Terry's cornflakes again, so we're really not happy.

Now that the mouse entrance (the bit under the sink where the pipes come up into the cupboard) has been sealed up, we're hoping Clive and the gang won't come back. As a test of their cunning, though, Terry has laid some sunflower seeds down inside the (now empty) cupboards, so that we'll know if they do make it over the top. As if, you know, the mouse droppings aren't enough of a clue. He's laid these seeds (do mice even like sunflower seeds?) out in the shape of a giant 'T'. Now, what would be really cool would be if, when we went back to check on them, Clive had changed them into the shape of a giant 'C', no? And if Clive does that? He is SO getting the Habitrail...

Mouse! In the house!

Or, in the Scottish: "There's a moose! Loose! About this hoose!" Gulp.

Terry found the evidence of our rodent visitor this morning, when he went to pour himself some cereal and found that the box had been ... nibbled. Now, I'd like to blame this on Rubin (let's face it, we blame him for everything else), but the sad lack of opposable thumbs on the fur guy would have made it pretty difficult for him to open the cupboard door (Wait... how did the mouse do it, then?) so we have to conclude that it was, indeed, a mouse.

Now, I'm not frightened of mice, so what bothers me is this: WHY? Why do we have a mouse? Is it because we are filthy perhaps? (Note: we are not filthy. In fact we are clean! But then, what's with the mouse? Why is it here? I mean, are they like headlice or something? Do they prefer clean heads houses? Say they like clean houses...) Is it because no matter how much time I spend cleaning and scrubbing and - yes - picking up bits of grass and fluff from the stair carpet WITH MY BARE HANDS because the Turbo Tiger totally broke, the floors are still always covered in all kinds of crap? (And that we really can blame Rubin for, seriously). WHY THE MOUSE?

Also: I feel sorry for the mouse. It mean, it's not like it's his fault, is it? He was probably all, "hey, I fancy gettin' me some Crunchy Nut Cornflakes" and so he did, and now we're going to have to capture him and kick his furry ass back to wherever he came from. Or actually, come to think of it, maybe not back to wherever he came from, because wherever he came from is clearly too close to my cereal cupboard for comfort. And yes, we will use a humane trap (and yes, we will buy plastic containers for the cereal from now on), but he's probably all little and cute and twitchy-nosed, and maybe we should keep him? Maybe we could get him one of those Habitrail things, and feed him cereal, and all live happily ever after?

I think we will call him Clive.

'Held at Branch-Point' update

Because I know you've all been beside yourselves with worry and sitting on the edge of your seats waiting to hear the end of my "held at branch-point" saga from the weekend, it's OK, you can stand down the vigil, I'm still alive. My teen assailant didn't follow me back to the house and beat the crap out of me with his branch, or anything, I just got totally bogged down with work again. But anyway...

Before I go any further here, I have to first of all eat my words on the whole "the police totally don't care if I DIE!" thing. Ahem. The police did indeed turn up on Sunday night to take my statement, and very nice the young man was too. He reassured me that no, I was not wasting police time, and that yes, teenagers are very scary, aren't they, and, why, that young son of a gun? REALLY COULD HAVE KILLED ME. He also said that in the future I should make free with the phoning of the police any time I see gangs of teenagers in the area - get this - EVEN IF THEY'RE NOT DOING ANYTHING. Yes! We have a result, people! Needless to say, my fingers have barely been off the phone buttons since... Nah, actually, I jest. The thing is, you see, I haven't been back to the ghetto yet. Nope, I've been walking Rubin in another, slightly less-ghetto part of town, and I've been taking Terry with me, because to be completely honest, I'd rather not be threatened by psycho teenagers every time I set foot out of doors, thanks very much.

Speaking of the psycho teenager, the nice policeman told me there is next to no chance of them finding him, and this is mostly because of my total inability to accurately describe people, places or distances. Especially distances. Seriously, if someone says to me, "drive for 100 metres down this road" I will probably drive forever because I have absolutely no conception of what 100 metres (or whatever the distance in question is) might look like. None. It's strange because I know what one metre looks like - it's exactly the same length as those metre sticks we used to use in primary school, funnily enough. I just can't for the life of me imagine what 100 of them laid out in a line would be like. No imagination? No spatial awareness? Just plain crazy? Yup, that's me alright.

I'm also not so hot with guessing people's ages and heights. Put 5 people in front of me and ask me to guess what age they all are and I can guarantee I will get every single one of them wrong. That's why I hate it when people do that "What age do you think I am?" thing sometimes. (WHY DO PEOPLE DO THAT?) I know I could be at least 20 years out - on either side - so seriously, folks, never ask me that. And I'm really, really bad with children's ages, mostly because almost everything involving children is a complete mystery to me. When asked to approximate the age of a child (and weirdly enough, this seems to happen to me quite a lot) I can only do so by making reference to my niece and nephews, whose ages I know.

Now, in this case, I knew that "taller than George but not as tall as Michael" probably wouldn't have been much use to the policeman (and would also have been completely wrong given that I wasn't actually wearing my contact lenses at the time of the incident, so the "teenager" could have been 43-year-old woman for all I know, or even a visitor from another planet), so I had to settle for my usual answer to these kind of questions, which is "Ummm... I'm not sure." So our conversation went a bit like this:

Nice Policeman: How far away was the person when you first seen him?

Me: Ummm... I'm not sure.

NP: And what height was he?

Me: Ummm... I'm not sure. Tall? Or maybe... short?

NP: I see. What age would you say he was, roughly?

Me: Ummm....

And so it went on. They will obviously never find him, but at least I've done my civic duty, and have been given carte blanche to phone the police anytime I feel like it, which will probably be a LOT.

Other than that, the rest of the week has been pretty boring. I did manage to buy a new summer skirt for £9 in the children's section at Asda (age 10-11, people. You can see how this screws with my ability to guess people's ages, can't you?) but no way was it as exciting as being almost-but-not-quite attacked in the woods, so actually, nothing exciting has happened this week, and really, I don't know why I'm even writing this.

As you were.

p.s Rubin's (heavily embellished) take on Sunday's events are here...

If you go down to the woods today...

So, today I have narrowly escaped assault, been chased out of the local woodland by a crazed teenager carrying a big stick,and am now waiting to be interviewed by the police. Hi, how is your Sunday going?

It was partly my fault. I mean, I was out walking Rubin, and I know the ghetto estate behind our own green and leafy suburb is a no-go area on the weekends and out of school hours (well, anytime really, but particularly when there are likely to be gangs of restless teenagers wandering around with their tracksuits and their Buckfast), but on this pleasant and sunny Sunday afternoon I was all "how bad can it possibly be?"

People, it can be BAD.

Most of the walk was pretty uneventful. As we entered the home stretch though, and begun our approach to the Ghetto Superstore (situated next to the Ghetto Post Office, Ghetto Chinese Takeaway and Ghetto Chip Shop) I saw a whole gang of spotty adolescents hanging around outside (because standing outside the Ghetto Superstore is, like, SO the coolest thing you could ever hope to do with your life. GOD, I can't wait until I'm cool enough to do that!), most of them dressed up as footballers and with lots of cheap gold jewellery rattling against their cans of lager. Yup, it's Stereotypes-R-Us down the ghetto, I'll tell you!

Seeing this blot on humanity appear on the horizon I stopped in my tracks. Given that my red hair and fluffy white Bichon Frise make me the natural target of the under-educated, I knew it would be sheer folly to try and walk past them, especially when they'd had all morning (when they should have been at church!) to get hyped up on Buckfast. So I turned right and plunged into the narrow strip of woods that buffers our estate from The Ghetto instead. This was not quite as crazy as it might sound: the woodland is actually quite pleasant - lots of squirrels have made their homes in the manky old sofas and burnt out prams - and it was created for the very purpose I was using it: giving the dog walkers and ramblers of the world somewhere far (well, actually quite close, but you know what I mean) from the smell of the Ghetto Chip shop to pass the time.

Today? Today it was not quite so pleasant. No, today, almost as soon as I got under the shade of the trees, I found myself accosted by a teenager with a BIG STICK. Seriously, it was huge - I actually think it was the branch of a large tree, and he was brandishing it like a baseball bat. "GIT OOTY MA WOOD!" (Translation: "Would you be so kind as to remove yourself from this woodland, please?") he shouted, coming towards me menacingly. "IT'S MA WOOD! GIT OOT! OOOOT!" This, needless to say, was accompanied by much waving of the branch, threateningly. It was really quite thrilling.

What did I do? The wrong thing, obviously. Well look, I may have been being threatened in the middle of a wood, with no one around to hear me if I screamed (thus answering the age old "If an Amber screams in a wood and there's only a mad Chav around to hear, does she make a noise?" question. Yes, she does make a noise, but then the chav kills her, the end.), but I was still me. I weighed up the options: me, 5'3", scared, got a dog with me but it's the Rubinman, who, to be honest, isn't much use in a fight. My Opponent: about the same height, not scared, carrying a branch the size of my entire body, crazy, possibly drunk... It was no contest, really. I decided to run away, but first I decided to be characteristically stupid and yell at him to LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE OR I WILL CALL THE POLICE AND THEY WILL TOTALLY RESCUE ME, OK? Then I looked around to see if Superman was on his way to save me, but Superman must've been busy, so I turned and ran home like a girl.

Of course, my ill-advised bit of bravado had served only to enrage my assailant further. "GNNAAAARRRRR!" he roared, raising his branch above his head and running towards me full pelt. But I had started running away by then and, I dunno, maybe he realised he would never catch me or something? (I mean, I don't like to boast, but I was on my primary school's running team, you know, and this one time the gym teacher told me I had "an athlete's action". I was 10 and have never been praised for my "action" since, but I have never forgotten that brief moment of glory). Anyway, he stopped following me and walked back to his friend (YES! THERE WERE TWO OF THEM! But the friend didn't actually do anything, so he doesn't really count), but not before shouting to me that I was "LUCKY". Yes, lucky.

Anyway, I made my trembling way back to the house and told my tale of woe to Terry, who told me to phone the police, because seriously, what has the world come to when a woman can't walk her dog behind her house without being threatened by hooligans with branches, WHAT HAS IT COME TO PEOPLE? I wasn't sure whether phoning the police would be an over-reaction, but because there's been a lot of trouble in the ghetto lately, and because I am all about the drama, I did it anyway. "Why, an elderly person or small child could walk through those woods and be killed, just like I almost was!" I thought. "And also: how very dare they threaten me and my dog?"

So, I called the police, who, despite sounding not at all interested in what I was saying, told me they'd "send someone round". Well, I've been waiting all afternoon, but no police. Maybe they're too busy out chasing real criminals, or maybe they just don't care that I could have died. Either way, no more ghetto walks for me, I think. Sorry, Rubin...

Three Sleeps to Go: Ghetto Gospel

Weal Watch:

The weals are still in situ, but every day brings them a little closer to normality, and I have everything crossed that they will have disappeared completely by Saturday. Oh please, God, let them have disappeared completely by Saturday...

When I woke up this morning and saw the diminished status of the weals, however, I was so overjoyed that I picked up Rubin and placed him on the bed for a quick game of "Rubin tries to lick Amber's face". "Great, the weals are almost gone," I thought joyfully - just as Rubin scratched my eyeball with his sharp little claw. Doh. I should totally be placed inside some kind of bubble for my own protection. Who do I speak to about that, I wonder?

Wedding Watch:

Things all seem to be going to plan with the wedding preparation so far (red weals aside, obviously), which means that something will probably go dramatically wrong  in the next couple of days. We visited the venue for the last time tonight and everything was looking good. I meanwhile, am starting to get a little bit nervous, although still mostly excited. Last night's dream: it was the day before the wedding and both of my shiny new veneers dropped off, plus one of my other teeth. Weirdly, Terry (who has no veneers), dreamt almost exactly the same thing. (I also dreamt that Sky and Elle from Neighbours were having a lesbian affair, but I don't think that had anything to do with the wedding...)

Also: at about 3am this morning, I leapt screaming from the bed and slammed the light on, shouting to Terry to GET OUT OF THE BED NOW because it was FILLED WITH CRABS, OMG! It took him a good five minutes to calm me down and convince me that there were no crustaceans in the bed. After that, sleep didn't come easy, let me tell you...

Ghetto Watch:

No, you didn't know there was a ghetto watch, did you? That's because I've been so busy freaking out about the RED WEALS that I have neglected to tell you all how I've also been freaking out about the Ghetto Kids, who are totally cruisin' for a bruisin' this week, for sure.

The Ghetto Kids, you see, got themselves a set of goalposts for Christmas. It's not clear which kids these goal posts belong to, because they're stationed in various gardens at various times. Most of the time, though, the goalposts are stationed at the bottom of MY garden, backing directly onto my front window. You can probably tell where I'm going with this.

For some time now I've been freaking the hell out concerned that the Ghetto Kids will one day miss the goals and hit my window instead. (No, that hasn't happened. Just thought I'd make that clear right now, in case you're expecting this story to be more interesting than it really is. Actually, it's not that interesting at all, so you might want to stop reading now. Bye!) This fear is not unfounded, because that ball? Is never out of my garden. And my brown picket fence? Has been totally destroyed by it.

Yes, tonight, as we left for Orocco Pier, I noticed that the Ghetto Kids were playing football again. The goals were no longer at the bottom of our garden (that being because I went out and yelled at them last night about it), but directly opposite it. Now, I can't prove that it was the Ghetto Kids that caused the fence to be TOTALLY FLATTENED by the time we came home, but given that they've been slamming their ball against it for a while now, and were totally using it as the opposite goal when we left, they're certainly at the top of my "Suspects" list. (Also on the list: the council, who swept away part of the fence with a cleaning van earlier this month.)

I'm not happy. So very, very not happy. And also: I'm worried. Because what if the kids put the goals back at the bottom of the garden while we're away on our honeymoon, and I'm not there to be the Ghetto Vigilante I am the rest of the time? And what if they actually do manage to break the window, and no one knows who to contact because we're not there, and although my parents will have a spare key, they won't be able to come round every day and check that Ghetto Kids haven't destroyed yet another part of our property? WHAT IF?

One thing's for sure: these Ghetto Kids are doing my red weals no favours whatsoever. And neither are the crustaceans in the bed.

White Van Hell

It's happening again. A white van pulls up outside a house in our street - the same house, in fact, that I last encountered Van Men in front of the last time. It disgorges a group of Neanderthal workmen. The radio is switched on, and turned up to the "louder than hell" setting. The White Van Men begin work. I, on the other hand, am forced to immediately stop working, and begin pacing frantically around the house muttering 'WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?" to Terry (who doesn't answer because as usual he's plugged into his computer watching a video and is therefore not able to hear either the cacophony of sound, or my ranting. 'Lucky Terry!' I hear you say...).

As you may have guessed by now, this kind of thing really winds me up. I mean, why should I be forced to listen to someone's crap music all day long? Why should I miss Neighbours just because the White Van Men can't bear to miss Lunchtime Drivetime on the radio? Why does no one have any manners any more?  Why do assholes think that everyone needs to hear their music? WHY?!

Now, in situations like this, I normally like to ask myself "What would Jack Bauer do?" But because the answer to that would probably be "burst into the street and kill every last one of them without even batting an eye", I'm just going to put my orange earplugs in and sit it out until it's time to go to the dentist (only one more hour to tote the weary peg teeth!). If the music is still blaring away by the time Neighbours comes on though, I won't hesitate to torture them.

The Morning After the Night Before

So, here's what 2007 looks like so far:

Top- bottom: Our garden, the garden of the house behind us. Also pictured: weird silver metal thing that looks like it maybe fell from a passing spaceship, spotted in the garden of the man next door. (Note: much more enormous in real life. The silver thing, that is, not the man next door)

Wow, 2007, nice work! Nothing like announcing your arrival, eh? I mean, I know I'm all about the drama, but when you showed up at the party, 2007, everyone stopped to look. It's a good job we're not superstitious, in a "the year will totally continue the way it started, with death and destruction a-plenty" kinda way, no?

After spending the first part of our evening watching our garden be comprehensively ripped apart, we repaired to Terry's mum's house for what we in Scotland call "The Bells" ("The Bells! The Bells!") and what you in the rest of the world probably call (just as accurately, but slightly less dramatically) "midnight". Five minutes before these bells (Bells! Bells!), Jackie Bird, who the BBC roll out every New Year to guide us through the "celebrations", beamingly informed us that now was "the moment we had all been waiting for!" We all dutifully gathered around the TV in no small excitement, but it turned out to be just more of that stupid-ass fiddle music we always get lumbered with on New Year's Eve (enlivened for us this year by an energetic display of some ballet/jazz/Irish dance fusion by our little niece Maria. This will come in handy should things start to flag at the wedding, methinks).

As the bells (The bells! The bells!) tolled, we were treated to the usual display of fireworks from Edinburgh Castle, although as the street party was cancelled this year it turned out that what we were actually seeing was the fireworks display from last year, in a bizarre kind of "here's some we prepared earlier" moment. (Or, who knows, it could have been the fireworks display from 1992 for all we know - I mean, they're basically all the same, aren't they? Maybe they've  been showing us old footage for years now, as part of some cost-cutting exercise?) We switched the TV off soon after that because it got too depressing, but what we did manage to catch seemed to be the usual "fey looking young woman singing some Celtic-sounding dirge" thing that the BBC foist on us every year in the misguided belief that we'd all prefer to bring in the New Year in abject misery, thanks very much. (One year a visitor from England asked my parents in astonishment why they were playing "modern music" at their New Year's Eve celebration, and not gathering round the hearth to play the bagpipes and sing "guid auld songs" about the Battle of Culloden and all that. My parents, of course, smacked the visitor up the side of the head* and pointed out that time marches on just as relentlessly in Scotland as it does in the rest of the world, and also: we're not mad, you know. Why, we've had horseless carriages for years now, years I tells ya. It's just a shame that the BBC has so far failed to realise this.)

Anyway. Terry is now busy giving Rubin his New Year's bath (we do actually bath him more than once a year, though, before you report us to the RSPCA or something): once I have been similarly bathed (although not that similarly, obviously. I mean, Terry won't be doing the honours, for instance) we'll be heading to my parents' house to make sure it's still standing have dinner and also: drink wine. And thus will end a total of four days of non-stop** partying for us, for yes, folks, we have attended four parties in four days now, which makes us sound very busy and popular, but actually, we're just mad.

* Not strictly true
** Actually, we did stop fairly often

How White Van Men Ruined My Life

So, another day, another white van pulls up outside the house, has multiple power tools unloaded from it, and is then used as a giant speaker, as its occupants strive to keep the volume load enough to still be audible over the noise of their drilling and sawing. AAARGH! WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?! Why has no one got any manners any more? In my day, you respected your neighbours. This was all fields then, you see, and this "pop music" they listen to? Well, in my day we had real music, that you could dance to. Gah.

</grumpyoldwoman>

Also: I think I'm getting the cold. This is a problem, because I? Am a hypochondriac. Did I ever tell you I'm a hypochondriac? Well I am. Why, in the summer I had a spate of migraines, and convinced myself that I had a brain tumor. Nothing to do with the fact that all of my migraine triggers were present, in high volumes, for two weeks. Hell, no. Much more likely that I was dying. Much more likely. I actually lost two pounds in weight during this period, due to the whole "shaking with fear" thing. I call it "The Migraine Diet". Works like no other. Don't try it at home, kids...

So, anyway, I think I'm getting the cold, but it's only a very low-level cold which hasn't really come to anything yet - slight sore throat, slightly runny nose, slight.. getting-the-cold feeling. It looks like the cold and it feels like the cold, but it has yet to actually develop into the cold, so my question, obviously, is "What if it's a terrible, fatal illness?" What if it's a terrible, fatal illness but I assume it's just the cold, so I don't do anything about it and then I die? WHAT IF, people?

Actually, while I'm here and ranting, here have another: as well as having the cold, I AM cold. So, so cold. Cold as in "I'm wearing two sweaters and a cardigan and I still can't get warm" cold. No, this is nothing to do with the "getting the cold" scenario mentioned above. This is how I spend every winter without fail. For reasons that have never been clear to me, I feel the cold more than most people. In Florida? I carry a light sweater with me at all times, just in case the temperature drops below 90. In Scotland, during the winter? I wear all my clothes, all the time. This is why I write about fashion for a living, clearly. Gah.

In Trouble With the Law

Well, it's been Scam City around here this morning. (And Spam City too, come to think of it: sixty emails this morning, only one of which was a real, honest-to-God communication from a real person. GOD.)

First came The Phone Call. Now, I've had this phone call before. It comes from an organisation - in this case 'TNT Children's Safety - who claim to be in the process of publishing a safety guide for children which will be sent out to parents at all of our local schools, and which is just crying out for my support, in the form of me spending a few hundred pounds on an advert for The Bizniss. Because, you know, saving the children is good, but cynical profiteering under the guise of "helping charity" is even better!

When we were new to business, I'd never fail to be sucked in by these people. I wouldn't actually buy an advert from them, of course - sometimes being poor has its uses - but I'd believe that they were, indeed, genuine organisations, genuinely trying to help the poor kiddies of the county. As much as I'd believe them, though, I'd also never failed to be angered by them, and the blatant guilt-tripping they'd inevitably engage in. "You don't want to buy an advert?" the caller would ask, incredulously. "But.. but... Miss McNaught, don't you care about the children?"

"Nope," I'd answer cheerfully, putting down the phone. "Ask their parents for donations! I am a hardened, child-free bitch donchya know." Well, two can play that game...

Anyway, a couple of years ago I had one such call which rapidly degenerated into the caller trying to convince me that if I didn't part with my money immediately,children would die instantly and it would ALL BE MY FAULT. In retrospect, I should have probably reported them to... someone... at this point, but the whole kidney failure thing was at its height and I decided to let it lie. More fool me. A few months later I had a phone call from the same organisation, thanking me for my generous support of their cause, and asking if I'd like to take out another advert, in their next wall planner.

Wallplanner? Support? Me? The hell?

I went into shock for a few moments (Had I somehow spent hundreds of pounds on an advert in a wallplanner, without noticing? Where had I got the money? Had they used a picture of me in the advert? What was I wearing in it?) before the penny dropped. There was no wallplanner. There was no "child safety campaign". And no, although they swore blind that I had indeed paid for it, and my advert was RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE of the planner - right in the middle, people! - there was no advert. They were trying to scam me.

I put this theory to the caller. CLICK! Brrrrrrrr......

So, today, the same thing happens, except 'TNT Children's Safety, as they're now calling themselves, had decided to skip stage one and proceed straight to stage two, with the "Gee, thanks for your advert, Amber, it was published back in May! Would you like another one?" Well, unluckily this lady (Miss Moore, if you want to speak to her. But seriously - don't.) called me before I'd had my first coffee of the day, so I went at her, all guns blazing. I'm a redhead - we get like that sometimes.

"Miss Moore" told me that I'd taken an advert back in May. I had signed for it and everything! Somehow, through the red veil of anger that was obscuring rational thought (yeah, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it) I managed to ask her to email me over the agreement so that I could see how well they'd forged my signature. She pretended not to be able to do this, and pretended not to understand what I meant when I asked her to snail mail it to me, although she did finally agree that she would send it through the post. I'm holding my breath as I write this, seriously. Then I asked her for the address and phone number of her organisation and she told me not to be silly (no, she really said that, I'm not making this up), and that she wasn't going to "waste her time reading out her address" when it would be on the mythical documentation she was going to "forget to send me" anyway.

"Well, you were happy enough to waste my time by calling me to try and scam me with this," was all I managed to get out before I was met with the now familiar CLICK! Brrrr.... Naturally, her phone number had been withheld, and a quick Google reveals that 'TNT Children's Safety' doesn't exist. Shocker.

Well, after all the drama I was in desperate need of a coffee, so I took my mug (no, not Terry, an actual mug) and headed down the stairs, stopping in my tracks as through the window I saw - THE POLICE. PARKED OUTSIDE MY HOUSE. AGAIN.

Not wanting to face the filth alone, and assuming that someone was, well, dead, I got Terry and stood on trembling legs as he opened the door. Terry was not remotely anxious about this, by the way, and the reason he wasn't worried? This is is the FIFTH TIME this year this has happened. The FIFTH TIME. Time and time again (well, five times) the police have turned up at our door looking for one David Ronald who they insist lives with us. This one time? They sent FIVE POLICE MEN to collect Mr. Ronald, and clearly didn't believe me when I said that no, it's just me, Terry and the dog (who, OK, could do with a night down the cells, but I don't think it would take five of them to take him in. Four, maybe...). I almost passed out.

This time they'd sent Good Cop and Also Good Cop, though, who immediately accepted that we weren't concealing a fugitive from the law (again, yes, there's Rubin, but what they don't know...), and told us that this time Mr Ronald had been spotted "swinging from the lampposts outside Chicago Rock". GOD. This is the kind of thing we're being connected to. WHAT MUST THE NEIGHBOURS THINK?

And, oh God, speaking of Neighbours, I think I hear the theme tune starting up...

The OC (That's 'Obsessive Compulsive' to You...)

Did I ever tell you I'm a bit of a neat freak? Just a little bit, you understand. Just in the way that if, say, the room I'm in is untidy, I'll get all itchy and not be able to breathe. I mean, I'm sure it's nothing to worry about.

Anyway, this is the latest Ikea Watch:

That? Oh, you know, that's just the back of the couch. I am TOTALLY coping with it all. Sure, today I announced I was going to take my laptop, get in the car and just drive, purely to get away from it all, but seriously, I was kidding! I am fine with the state the house is in at the moment, and I know it will all be worth it once we finally get off our asses and get things sorted. For real. Also, we have other, more important things to worry about at the moment. Like the Cable Monster we found hiding behind our desks when we moved them:

 

The new desks are actually in situ now, as is the red filing cabinet and most of the other stuff we bought at Ikea. So it's really just the detrius we're left with, and, given that the council can't come to take it all away until Monday, looks like it's the valium for me again. Ah well.

Speaking of the council, though, remember that time I reported our noisy neighbour, and the nice man came round and listened to me whine for a while? Well, not long after that a nice letter popped through the mail from none other than VICTIM SUPPORT, who were offering to, y'know, support me, because I am a victim. Needless to say, this was enough to snap me back to reality pretty quick, and that particular neighbour shut up after that, so I didn't trouble them again.

This morning, though, another letter popped in, which Terry opened before he realised that although it had our address on it, it had someone else's name. (No, he really did open it thinking it was for him, I'm not just saying that). Well, whaddya know, it was another letter from Victim Support, also offering help and assistance "following your report of anti social behaviour". WELL. At first I was elated by the knowledge that someone else in our street had had reason to report one of our habitually noisy neighbours. "I am not alone!" I thought, jubilantly. There are others like me out there - others who think that, hell no! Loud music every day is not acceptable, and we will fight them on the beaches, by God we will!

The natives are restless again...

The neighbours are At It again: using their cars as boom boxes as they lovingly spend hour on hour carefully polishing and waxing their vehicles, all the while listening to ear-bleeding music, and forcing the rest of the street to do likewise. WHY? ARE THEY TRYING TO MAKE ME CRAZY? Also: do none of these people work? How come they have endless time to wash their cars on a Thursday morning? Why aren't they sitting at their desks like the rest of us, desperately trying to avoid Huge Projects O'Doom?

This uprising in The Ghetto comes at a particularly bad time for me, as it renders the front of the house inaccessible, due to the THUMP! THUMP! of the bass, right at a time when I need it most. You see, last night a true and faithful servant left us for good, shuffling off this mortal coil, to our very great distress. RIP, Terry's chair. You saw many years of loyal service, and - yes - abuse, and you did so uncomplainingly. You will be sadly missed.

God knows, it can't have been easy working with Terry. He broke your back so that he could be completely horizontal at all times, and last night? When he leaned back just a little too far and you SNAPPED RIGHT IN HALF? Man, that was a bad scene.

We will be taking a trip to Ikea on Sunday to replace the chair. In the meantime, I stupidly said Terry could have my chair because hey, I have a laptop, so I can totally do that thing I'm always meaning to do, the one where I lie around the house like I'm in a furniture advert, working away but also, lying down at the same time! Except no, not really. The bedroom is at the front of the house. The living room is at the front of the house. The pounding bass line, coming from the car across the road - yup, you guessed it, at the front of the house.

Snipers, where are you now, when we need you?

Amber's Guide to Neighbourhood Etiquette

Following our Sunday evening spent under siege from toddlers and the lobotomized at birth, I thought this little guide to neighbourhood etiquette might come in handy. (For Them, you understand. Not you. Unless you, of course, are Them, in which case would you get your caravan off the pavement and keep your kids on a leash, thanks?). So here it is: Amber's guide to the acceptable and the unacceptable of neighbourhood life. Next week: how to wear clothes and why that's important...

Acceptable:
Parking your car and caravan on the pavement for a few hours while you unpack and wind down from your holiday.
Unacceptable:
Leaving your car and caravan on said pavement for THREE WEEKS, and showing no inclination of moving them at all EVER.

Acceptable:
Playing your car stereo loudly as you drive in and out of the street.
Unacceptable:
Playing your car stereo loudly as you sit in the car while it's parked, repeatedly banging your fool head against the steering wheel, so the horn sounds. You are depriving some poor village of its idiot. Get back there, now.

Acceptable:
Walking around the street wearing clothes.
Unacceptable:
Walking around the street wearing night clothes.

Acceptable:
Making a lot of drilling/hammering/lawnmowing noise as you go about the business of maintaining your property.
Unacceptable:
Turning up the volume on your car stereo so that you can still hear it above the sound of your drilling/hammering/lawnmowing. See, a pneumatic drill isn't really designed to be drowned out, y'know? Can you see that?

Acceptable:
Allowing your children to play loudly in the street.
Unacceptable:
Allowing your children to play loudly in the street at one o'clock in the morning.

Acceptable:
Playing music in the comfort of your own home.
Unacceptable:
Bringing your stereo out into your front garden. Turning up the volume.

Acceptable:
Being pretty lax about cutting the grass in your garden.
Unacceptable:
When it gets to the stage where Shergar and Lord Lucan could be hiding in there and none of us would be any the wiser.

Acceptable:
Parking your car in your driveway.
Unacceptable:
Parking your car in your neighbour's driveway.

Acceptable:
Keeping the hell away from my house.
Unacceptable:
Peering through my front window with your nose pressed against the glass. Inviting your small friends to join you. SWINES. (Nope, not over it.)

Acceptable:
Riding your mini motorcycle on private land, which is the only place you can legally ride it.
Unacceptable:
Riding your mini motorcycle up and down the pavement in the street. For eight hours straight. With a toddler riding pillion. Without a helmet. Repeating this the next day. For a week.

Acceptable:
Entering a neighbour's garden to collect your ball, which has inadvertently landed there.
Unaccepatble:
Remaining in the neighbour's garden to continue with your game.
Also unacceptable:
Entering your neighbour's garden clutching a cat. Placing cat in the midst of the waist high grass (see: Being Pretty Lax About Cutting the Grass in Your Garden). Picking up your neighbour's pitchfork. Walking towards cat with it. And, OK, I have NO IDEA what kind of innocent childhood games involve a cat and a pitchfork, you little swines, but next time I won't just shriek at you like a demented thing for five minutes. (Nope, not over that one either).

In the interests of fairness, I should probably point out here that there are many ways in which our neighbours' behaviour has not been totally batshit crazy. They have not yet, for example, run riot in the street with a sawn-off shotgun, massacring everyone who enters their line of vision, and nor have they torched our home one stormy night. At the time of writing, they are not dancing in hoods around a burning cross, and nor are they sacrificing small children to the God of Buckfast and Diamond White. But, y'know, tune in next week, because, really, nothing would surprise me now...

Love Thy Neighbour Part 2

Not ten minutes after I posted my last entry, Terry had to run outside to stop two of the neighbourhood kids ramraiding our brown picket fence with their tonka toys.

Sing it with me, people:

Well the world turns
And a hungry little boy with a runny nose
Plays in the street as the cold wind blows
In the ghetto... (In the ghetto)

Love Thy Neighbour*

You know, I hate to give the impression that Terry and I are living in a ghetto here, but seriously - WE ARE LIVING IN A FREAKING GHETTO HERE, PEOPLE. The latest evidence of this? Well, hot on the heels of Little Johnny and His Amazing Tin Whistle, I'm proud to present The Sad Tale of the Teenager in the Car. Said sad tale can mostly be summed up like this:

There is a teenager in a car. Across the street. He has the car stereo jacked up to EAR BLEEDINGLY LOUD, and every minute or so he'll lean heavily on the horn, evidently taking great pleasure in the resulting cacophony of sound. Occasionally he'll grow tired of the music and the car horn, and you'd think that's when we'd celebrate, no? No. That's when he switches the radio to sheer white noise and jacks the sound up even higher. Gah.

In the front garden of the house in front of which the car is parked, sit the teenager's parents. Drinking. Accompanied by another teenager. Also drinking. In the house across the road (Our house! In the middle of our street!) paces a demented red haired woman with a pair of orange earphones and matching rubber earplugs. If a freak accident were to see both car and teenager blown into the sky and away from the street altogether, it could not happen soon enough for the woman, who is thisclose to crazy from all the noise.

In the spare bedroom sits a much beleaguered boyfriend and a fluffy white wolf dog. They want either the teenager or the crazy lady in the headphones to shut up now. They really don't care which.

So, this is how Sunday evening has been spent. I am incandescent with rage. WHY? Why do they torment me like this? Why am I the only person in the street with even the slightest clue about what constitutes "good manners"? Why did Little Johnny's parents let him blow his whistle for three. solid. hours? Why are the neighbourhood children always in my garden? Why is there a car and a caravan parked on the pavement in front of my house? Why don't they make the headphones in a range of colours, so I could match them with my outfits? WHY?

* Unless thy neighbour is a punk-ass ghetto neighbour, like ours.

One Nation Controlled by the Assclowns

Remember last week, when the nice man from the council came round to discuss my Neighbours from Hell problem? Well, the nice man was very helpful. He gave me a nice card, with a nice phone number on it, which he said I should feel free to contact any time, day or night, that the music started up.

A nice card which I immediately lost. For real.

As his car disappeared around the corner of the street, the music started up. Loud. Now, I could have called him back right then and there but I didn't, because I? Was embarrassed. I had tried so hard to be good and rational, and to not seem like some totally crazy noise lady who walks around in orange headphones all the time because any kind of noise drives her completely and utterly batshit crazy. Even although I totally am that crazy lady.

Anyway, the noise started up again on Saturday afternoon, as I was out mowing the lawn. Again, I did not call, partly because I had lost the nice card with the phone number on it, but mostly because it was Saturday afternoon and I figured the powers that be would consider Saturday afternoon to be fair game as far as ear-bleedingly loud music goes. (I personally don't understand this. Far as I know, if the music is too loud, it's too loud whenever it's played. It doesn't become OK at 2pm on Tuesday, or on the fourth Thursday of every month.)

Yesterday afternoon, the music started up again, louder than ever before. This time, however, a new player had entered the game: the man in the house opposite us, who was listening to heavy metal and wanted the whole street to know it. It made me want to kill myself. I know it made Terry want to kill me, for sure. Instead, I came into the bedroom, which is on the other side of the house, thinking I could set up the laptop. But no! the kids across the street had set up a ghetto blaster on their front lawn. A ghetto blaster, people. Snipers, where are you when we need you?

So, this afternoon, Terry and I adjourn to the living room for our lunchtime viewing of Neighbours. As the theme tune struck up, however, so did a theme tune of a different kind: a pounding baseline so loud that even Terry was forced to break his usual zen silence and express his irritation. It was coming from a blue van/mobile disco belonging to two workmen who were busy digging something up in one of our neighbour's gardens. (Note: not even our next-door-neighbour. This is a house two doors along). The workmen are apparently Green Day fans. They don't wanna be American Idiots. But they sure are a couple of British Assclowns.

People, I put up with it until the end of Neighbours - not that we could hear Neighbours, of course. Then all hell broke loose. See, I always knew it would end this way. That I would control myself and put up with the noise for so long, and then, one day, something in my head would break and I'd issue from the house like an avenging angel, ready to set the world to rights by forcing two workmen to turn their music down. Which is pretty much what happened.

I mean, I had intended to be all reasonable and stuff, but when it came to it, my voice went all shrill, and I had to yell to be heard over the music anyway, so I guess I thought that seeing as I'd started off all shrill and shouty, I may as well continue that way.

They laughed at me.

I knew they would. I don't exactly inspire fear, you see. So I walked back to the house on shaky legs, rejoicing in the fact that although I'd made myself look like a freak, they had, at least, turned the music down. I poured myself a coffee (because yeah, I totally need more caffeine) and came up to the bedroom, which is my office at the moment on account of my computer being FUBAR. Let's not even go there, though.

You can guess what's coming, can't you? As soon as I closed the door and switched on the laptop, the music started up again.

Someone shoot me. Please.

"They told us/ all they wanted/ was a sound that could kill someone..."

My neighbour is trying to kill me. With noise. Yes, noise could totally kill me. It could drive me so freaking crazy that I go out of my tiny mind and end up in a tinfoil helmet and a straightjacket, and let me tell you, that's not such a far-fetched idea. I mean, I already have the tinfoil helmet.

OK, well, I don't. Not yet. What I do have, though, is a pair of bright orange ear plugs and matching orange ear phones, and by God I'm using them.

It started last Friday. Beautiful day, sunny, windows open. There I am sitting at my desk listening to the little birdies cheeping outside, the sound of children's laughter… and Robbie Williams. Robbie Williams was IN MY FACE, people. He was coming from the house one block along for us, and my God, he was singing his little heart out. Loud.

When Robbie finished, someone else came on. I don't even know who it was because by that point I was so incandescent with rage that I all I could hear was the sound of blood pounding in my ears. I hate noise. I especially hate noise of the pounding baseline, "I don't care if you hate my music, because I'm going to play it anyway," type. I hate it so much I could SPIT. Are you getting that I hate it, people? Are you?I chalked last week's experience up to a one off. When I went out to buy napkins for the dinner party we were having that night, I saw the lady of the house in question out in the street in her nightgown, trying to chase her little blighters of kids back into the house. So, OK, I thought. Either she's off work sick and it's addled her brain to the point of ignorance, or she's been holed up in there all day with just an Elvis CD for company.

Looks like it was the latter. Today it started again. Last week I sat out five hours of it before giving in to my urge to email the local council a short, but nevertheless whiny, rant about how I run a business from hoooome, and I need silence, and also, why do I pay you council tax when you don't doooo anything? Today I lasted about five minutes before I got on the phone.

So. I grassed her up. I am a grass. I will totally wake up tonight with a horse's head in the bed next to me or something, but at least it will be quiet! I hope. There, is, of course, always that chance that Our Lady of the Dressing Gown could retaliate, with even louder music, or by playing Bryan Adams instead of Robbie Williams, but I feel I have done the right thing. I have struck a blow for justice, for all of the poor, beleaguered people who are being slowly killed by noise.

<-- Today's outfit. I am nothing if not coordinated...