Rabid

Imagine you're living in a block of terraced houses.  But you're not in one of those nifty end of terrace jobbies that allows you (usually) a little bit of side access (with mebbe a little garage-y thingie) and the blessed relief of not being sandwiched between two other houses.

Nope, you're smack bang right in the middle of the terrace.

With the neighbour from hell living right next door to you.

And, whilst the neighbours on the other side of your house are mild and quieter than the dead, the general hubbub and carrying on from the neighbour on the other side makes it seem as though you are surrounded on all sides by crazed furies.

I'm sure you can recall this post about the neighbour in question.  You know, the one who had taken up unbelievably loud shaggity-shagging following the separation from her husband of a coupla months.

Well since that posting, the din next door has got worse.  Although this is not wholly due to our neighbour's vagina.

O no.

Whilst the rumpo has continued apace (although slightly diminished in the way of frequency and volume) we have had to endure an endless round of barking coming from her dogs (a couple of dachsunds who she lets out, and then leaves, in her garden for hours at a time whilst they whine and make merry hell in a pleading manner to be let back in).  There is only so long the dogs can bark for before they are reduced to sounding like that bloke off of Coldplay (i.e. pathetic `yodelling') which, unless you are stone deaf or - in the case of my neighbour - riding some young buck like Seabiscuit, you cant fail to hear ... and want to do something (anything) to make it stop.

This is in addition to the ever increasing piles of dog turds in her back garden, and the mysterious hammering, grinding, scraping and banging (the non-coitus kind) noises which seem to kick off from 9pm and run to just past midnight most nights.

In short it's been like living on the film set of Pacific Heights.

So one evening, a coupla months ago, after hearing her poor dogs cry and whine in her back garden for an age yet again, I called round to her house.  The whole property was in darkness but as her dogs were going like billy-ho out back and her cars were parked out front I went along with the assumption that somewhere in her house was someone and rattled on her door knocker until that someone answered.

Which someone eventually did - but only after (which I caught through sounds and shadows from her living-room window) the back door was opened and the dogs let in.

"Yes?" the neighbour enquired after taking her sweet-ass time about opening up her front door.

"Hi - I'm just next door." I started.

 "Yes ... erm ... London-Lass isnt it?" she said, yawning a bit.

"Yes that's right .. and you're ... " I began but then faltered as her name (which is stupid) had slipped my tongue.

"Sapphire."

"Yes, yes.  Well, erm, I had to call over to check that everything was OK. Your dogs have been outside for a very long time and it sounded like they were getting quite stressed out."

"O, them!" the neighbour gently chortled.  "They ... they're OK.  I've been out of it with a head cold and was upstairs and fell asleep, but they're all right now."

At this point, she sneezed.  But not very convincingly.

"Right OK, just wanted to make sure that your dogs were OK.  I should point out that it's actually not just tonight I've heard them and they do sound very stressed out."

"O ok ... well, er, thanks for that," she replied, and after watching her fake another sneeze, I walked back to my house.

Anyway, after this conversation, there was (as you're probably expecting) absolutely no difference in the barking/yodelling/general noise levels from next door and, so it was, late one night I found myself a couple of weeks ago, stiff as a board in my bed, listening to the canine yodelling from the garden next door and knowing that something had to be done otherwise it was going to be another broken night's sleep for me.

After tossing and turning for a bit longer, my mood began to shift from mildly irritated to properly angry, and my thoughts had changed from trying to count sheep to slicing up the shepherd.

Finally I'd had enough.  My rage was at boiling point as a result of over half a year's worth of noise pollution from next door.

As Scotty from Star Trek was apt to pipe "She cannae take it cap'n - SHE'S GOIN' TE BLER!!!!"

Which I did.  Dressed in old woman's nightie (check), hair mussed up from tossing and turning (check), glasses wonky from being thrown on my face (check) and feet in weird boot slippers that looked like they came straight off a jumble-sale (check).

The conversation that then took place that night I am not proud of.  Having always been a fond fan of the English language and all its weird eccentricities, I tend not to use swear words in every day language when other phrases will do just as well (not that I'm averse to peppering a sentence with a carefully chosen curse word - it helps, if nothing else, to make one look big and cool).

However all of the above was forgotten.  Never mind about Ray Milland having his Lost Weekend - London-Lass had her Lost Ten Minutes.  As I stood on my next door neighbour's doorstop, my tongue and gums chomped and gnashed on a fruity load of bollocks and fucks and, let me tell you, venting my spleen never felt so good.

And since my outpouring of fury?

Next door has been as quiet as a morgue (almost).  The shagging would appear to have moved to another venue (since there is hardly any rhubarbadoodle type stuff to be heard), the dogs are naturally still let out (but let in again after only a few minutes), the piles of turds have been cleared, the weird night noises have stopped and I can now sleep at night.

So much for reasoned debate.

In my neck of the words, rabid is obviously the only language which my people heed.