Friday 9 April 2010

Love thy neighbour.....

So I thought I would write a little about the ahem, "eclectic" assortment of people who I share the block of flats that I live in with.

Here goes: At number 8, we have a scruffy young couple who seem to think it's fun to slam the (broken) entrance doors at all hours. Oh, and let their dogs crap and pee in the stairwell too. That's when they're not at home all day by themselves, whining miserably (the dogs, not the couple). I only recently found out that the male plays rugby for Scotland, when he knocked on my door to tell me that his mad girlfriend had sold a story about him to the newspapers, & it was all rubbish. I'd like to know which of the Scotland teams he plays for, as I can't find him online anywhere. God help Scotland, if he has so little savvy he can't even consider his neighbours, that's what I say! Oh, and the mad girlfriend is back. Grrrr!!

On the same landing as that pair, we have a similar couple of annoying young people. He seems Scottish & she I think, is Spanish. Not an immediate cause of any problems you might think, but it turns out that she is even worse than her neighbour, as she likes to come home at 3am, shouting and laughing in Spanish, with no regard whatsoever for the fact that people are sleeping, and indeed I have a child to get up for school just 4 hours later. One night I got so fed up, I jumped out of bed, hurriedly unlocked the front door, and shouted up the stairwell to whichever gobshite it was to shut the f**k up. This surprisingly, drew a "F****** bitch!!" as opposed to a "Oops, sorry, we didn't realise how loud we were being!!" (which was what any decent person would have said). It was only a few weeks later when I was chatting to her boyfriend (who seems amiable enough, oddly) that I mentioned this incident, and by the look on his face, I realised it was HIS girlfriend. Well tough luck, matey!
Oh, this couple like to have noisy parties, NOT tell their guests about the broken entrance door, and then leave bottles outside their door for months at a time, also. (As well as seeming to run some kind of halfway house for various European nationalities. Don't know what that's all about! All I know is that the number of people who trot up their stairs with suitcases, gabbling away in various languages, must have their place stuffed to capacity).

Down to number 6 (under the manky dog people). This is actually the flat that I used to live in, before I found this nicer one in the same stair (couldn't be arsed to move far, and the neighbours weren't as bad then!). This is now let out to a bunch of Indian boys, who, after much griping from me, are now, on the whole, quiet little mice when they come in from their night-shifts. Groovy. One sorted, loads to go.

Across the landing from them are a bunch of Indian girls, who regularly get visits from an extremely noisy friend of theirs, who likes to leave at 4am and slam the doors on his way out (despite being shouted at). I recognised him as a person that gets on the bus every morning, when we're on the way to school, shouting constantly into his phone.
The indian girls seem nice enough, however they are clearly part of the Riverdance troup, judging by how they like to run up and down their flat and do the stomp, the second I turn my lights off to go to sleep.

Ok, now we're onto flat 5. The two cousins from Warrington. They like to come home completely rat-arsed, and try to smash their door down when they find they've locked themselves out (before failing, and passing out in the stair outside my front door for the rest of the night). Enough said about them. One of them had a black eye the other week, can't say I'm surprised.

The lady who lives at flat 3 with her son, is a perfect neighbour, can't say a bad word about her ;-)

Flat 2 contains a nice older lady who has been there even before 2001 when My Son & I moved into flat 6. She's very friendly and nice to talk to (she's quite posh), but if you happen to be in the stairwell when she opens her front door, you'd think she ran a cigarette factory. She must have a hell of a habit.

Last but not least, we have the 2 ladies who share flat 1 (underneath moi). They play rugby, and have a strange penchant for blasting Bon Jovi and Abba out at 2pm in the afternoon. Hey, whatever floats your boat. Still, would be nice to be able to actually hear my tv.....

So there you have it-a strange assortment of freaks, rude, unhygienic party animals, and a nice little genteel lady who seems to smoke a hundred a day.

Just under 3 months til my escape to Sweden...and breathe........