Neighbours, everybody needs good neighbours

Let me intro­duce you to Dominic.

Dominic is my neigh­bour. He lives in the flat down­stairs. He moved in about two months ago — although I’ve never seen him or spoken to him, and wouldn’t even know his name if he hadn’t informed me of it him­self. I’m the typ­ical Brit­ish neigh­bour, you see — I keep myself to myself and don’t mix with the people next door.

How­ever, I have been forced to become very aware of Dominic since he moved in. It’s dif­fi­cult to ignore him, in fact. Dominic plays the bass gui­tar. His typ­ical early even­ing enter­tain­ment involves put­ting on a tape of some uniden­ti­fi­able rock music and play­ing along to it. For an hour or more. Mono­ton­ously. Tune­lessly. Loudly. Even worse, he some­times plays bass accom­pani­ment to a pat­tern on his drum machine — “duh — tschhh — duh — tschhh — duh — tschhh — duh — tschhh!” Bass gui­tar — like the violin — is one of those instru­ments that it’s almost pain­ful to hear played badly. But I’ve been very patient — I love music, and I don’t want to begrudge someone the chance to prac­tice on their chosen instrument.

Dominic’s other hobby is ham­mer­ing. Oh boy, does he love ham­mer­ing. Once again, I don’t begrudge any­one the chance to indulge in some DIY when they move into a new prop­erty, but Dominic has now been ham­mer­ing almost con­stantly for two months. His favour­ite time to enjoy a spot of incess­ant banging appears to be week­ends, espe­cially the morn­ings. It’s dif­fi­cult to have a chilled and relaxed week­end when it’s accom­pan­ied by the sound of Dominic ham­mer­ing floor­boards, Dominic ham­mer­ing walls, Dominic ham­mer­ing doors and win­dow frames.

Hav­ing a some­what snti-social atti­tude towards neigh­bours, and also dis­play­ing all the traits of typ­ical Brit­ish reserve, I have so far res­isted “hav­ing a quiet word” with Dominic. I have not given in to the tempta­tion to pop down to his flat with a strong pair of scis­sors and cut through the strings of his bass gui­tar. As for his ham­mer­ing, it is so fre­quent that I had recently begun to ima­gine that either he was bury­ing things under his floor­boards, or he was run­ning the bomb-making fact­ory sup­ply­ing the explos­ives for the recent spate of ter­ror­ist explo­sions in the West Lon­don area. For­tu­nately for Dominic, I decided not to call the Crimestop­pers hot­line to report either of these theories.

Finally, how­ever, Dominic may have pushed me too far.

When I got home yes­ter­day even­ing, I dis­covered that a note from my neigh­bour — whom, for the first time, I dis­covered was called Dominic — had been put through my let­ter­box. It was writ­ten in bright purple felt tip pen. Not a good start. It was also barely lit­er­ate, in a way that I par­tic­u­larly hate — none of the spelling was incor­rect, but the gram­mar and sen­tence con­struc­tion were all over the place (yes, feel free to call me a snob if you wish). Finally, pos­sibly in an attempt to legit­im­ise his note even fur­ther, he had writ­ten it on the reverse of the most recent edi­tion of the news­let­ter from our local Res­id­ents’ Association.

Aside: Yes, I’m afraid that we have a Res­id­ents’ Asso­ci­ation where I live. If you’ve never exper­i­enced the joys of this pecu­li­arly Brit­ish insti­tu­tion, they are basic­ally an excuse for people with too much time on their hands to wield a little bit of power, in an attempt to brighten up their empty little lives. These asso­ci­ations are exclus­ive ‘clubs’ where these poor deluded souls can ima­gine that they are fig­ures of import­ance and influ­ence in the local com­munity. Our asso­ci­ation, for instance, is very fond of extremely formal notices, which are loc­ated on almost every street corner and gate-post: keep off the grass, please refrain from sit­ting on the walls, no park­ing per­mit­ted, please don’t exhale between the hours of 10.00pm and 7.00am. That sort of thing. Just to remind every­one who is in charge, every notice dis­plays the name of the Res­id­ents’ Asso­ci­ation at the top. The mes­sage is: it’s a free coun­try, and an Englishman’s home is his castle — just as long as you don’t hap­pen to live under the ridicu­lous and nit-picking rules of a Res­id­ents’ Association.

Back to the note. Dominic’s poorly-written felt tip scrawl informed me — in an insuf­fer­ably polite man­ner that failed to dis­guise the petu­lant tone — that he is cur­rently work­ing odd hours, and there­fore he often sleeps late on week­day morn­ings. Appar­ently, the music that I play whilst dress­ing and get­ting ready for work is dis­turb­ing him. Hmm.

I’m noth­ing if not fair. In the few weeks that I’ve had my new hi-fi, the volume of my music may have been creep­ing up slightly, and the sys­tem does have a power­ful bass level. But hav­ing lived with noisy neigh­bours on a num­ber of occa­sions, I’m always par­tic­u­larly care­ful to keep a check on the volume of any music I play. Unfor­tu­nately, Dominic’s ham­mer­ing and bass-thumping antics of the past couple of months have hardly endeared him to me, and I’m drawn to think­ing that his note there­fore dis­plays almost unbe­liev­able cheek. Des­pite all that, this morn­ing I kept the radio on rather than put­ting on a CD, and I kept the volume con­trol in the bot­tom area of the dial. I am far too con­sid­er­ate, and I hate myself for it.

Yes­ter­day was a very enjoy­able day, for vari­ous reas­ons, but this incid­ent suc­ceeded in send­ing me to bed feel­ing decidedly grumpy.

Hello Dominic. This Is War.