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?)
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…)
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.
We interrupt this broadcast to bring you the news that after more than a year of neglect, the lawn of Nigel: International Man of Mystery Next Door was cut this afternoon. Front and back, people. The lawn was not, sadly, cut by the IMOM himself – that would have been more excitement than I could take on a Monday afternoon (and would also have broken Nigel’s “not seen since February” record, which would have been a shame, really). No, the lawn was mown by a workman who had obviously been employed for that very lawn-cuttin’ reason. The question now is:
WHY?
I mean, it’s not like Nigel has ever bothered about the state of the lawn before. Other than that two-month period just after he moved in, when he would tend the garden obsessively, obviously. Why, last year the lawn didn’t get mown at all, and we had to rely on the neighbourhood kids trampling the grass down every day to keep it in check, and reassure us that there weren’t people living in it or anything. So why now? Could it be that Nigel is planning a return to the neighbourhood? Is he thinking of selling the house? Have the police finally caught up with him, and now he’s languishing in jail, and the house is being sold off to pay his debts?
More importantly: if someone is, indeed, coming to live in the house, HOW WILL I COPE? I am, as you all know, notoriously intolerant of noise and, well, other people. And because Nigel has been MIA for around three years now, I’ve become used to not having neighbours. I don’t want neighbours. They will annoy me. They’ll be all trampling up and down their stairs, playing loud music, having their TV on all the time, and just generally BEING THERE. I hate that.
I mean, it could just be that he sent someone round to cut the grass because GOD, that grass needed cut. Please let it be that.
In other news: I am once again up to my eyeballs in Huge Projects O’Doom, and barely even have time to breathe at the moment, let alone update my blog. Expect lots of updates this week, then: you know how I love to procrastinate…
Tagged International Man of Mystery
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…
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.
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…
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…
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.
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.
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