You wash, I’ll dry

I’ve lived in my flat for one week short of a year, and in that time I’ve never talked to the man who lives on the top floor, other than to mumble a few pleas­ant­ries when we pass on the stairs. Yet from these briefest of brief con­ver­sa­tions, I had some­how deduced that he was gay. Gay and Irish, as a mat­ter of fact. Well, he’s still Irish (as far as I know), but he’s pat­ently not gay since his girl­friend recently moved in with him.

So any­way, yes, she’s moved in upstairs. And in the few weeks that she’s been shar­ing this delight­ful Vic­torian con­ver­sion with the reg­u­la­tion uneven floor­boards, I’ve noticed some­thing. There is now a dis­tinct sense of order to their lives. In fact, I worry for them, because there’s pos­sibly slightly too much order. I try to take as little interest in my neigh­bours as pos­sible — after all, I am a Lon­doner, and pre­serving a keen sense of dis­in­terest in the people who live along­side you is almost part of the job descrip­tion — but it’s impossible not to notice, for instance, that they always have their wash­ing machine on at the same times. Or, due to the volume of their TV alert­ing me to the fact, that they always watch the News at Ten on ITV. Or that the same three friends always visit on Sat­urday after­noons, too.

I don’t want to notice these things — believe me, I don’t — but the way in which a build­ing like this trans­mits every single noise makes it almost unavoid­able. Upstairs is also much more evid­ent than it was before, pre­sum­ably because up until she moved in he was spend­ing most of his time at her place.

And she does wear very noisy heels. Harsh, but fair.

Need­less to say, I wish them every joy in their life together. I just wish they wouldn’t listen to their Seal albums all the time, and I wish they were a little more unpre­dict­able. Run­ning like clock­work is a very unap­peal­ing habit to have in such close neigh­bours; it makes me feel some­how dis­or­gan­ised and lazy all at the same time. See, I’m already suc­cumb­ing to neighbour-induced para­noia — and I don’t even know them, for heaven’s sake.

Aside: I inten­ded this post to be a deep and mean­ing­ful pon­ti­fic­a­tion on the lack of com­munity in the city. How­ever, con­sid­er­ing that I’m cur­rently stuck in a rut of writ­ing aim­less crap, I thought that such pro­fund­ity might be too much of a chal­lenge for my tired mind. I shall save my philo­soph­ising for another day. Bet you can’t wait.