My upstairs neighbours were noisy again last night. Every few weeks they have a social get-together and even though they take their shoes off (my request; the clipp-clopping on the wooden floor sounds like a tribe of toddlers parading round in their mum’s high-heels) and don’t do music, they still find a way to keep me awake. What I have found is that as the evening progresses the main man shouts his jokes rather than makes them, his humour being dependent on volume, and his accolytes scream or shout their allegiance back. Listening to the sounds from the floor below give you a strange idea of what goes on up there. The parties, to my nether-ears, feature the shouting of funny stories, the rhythmic slamming of doors (it must be some kind of a parlour game), the dull thuds of large packages or boxes being dropped onto the floor (they must be sorting through their amazon deliveries) and the constant spilling of ball-bearings onto the parquet. If that is what they are really doing till two in the morning, they go up in my estimation. Anyway, in the end, I struggled up from my bed, went off to the little cupboard at the back of the bathroom where I keep appliances, and, as usual, treated them to some fierce shocks with the broom handle on my living room ceiling. The funny story from the main man stopped or must suddenly have been spoken at everyday volume and didn’t seem quite so funny anymore. I went back to bed.

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