Mother-fucking sons of whores
So, last night I decided to get to bed early. We're having a variety of minor problems at work, all of which added up to me having to be in 90 minutes earlier than usual. Fair enough, I thought - I'll get to bed for 11:30, get a little less sleep than usual, and make it to work early enough to get everything out the way before panic starts running round the office and people start throwing themselves out of windows.
The people upstairs were playing music, but it wasn't _that_ loud - I was able to fall asleep listening to something quiet, and vaguely ambiently soothing.
This wasn't the case at 1am, when I woke up, badly needing to piss, with the voice of Madonna coming through the ceiling. Now, this wasn't the last Madonna album, it was the earlier poppier stuff, so you can't fault their taste too much - but it was damn loud. Certainly loud enough that I couldn't get back to sleep easily. And when I _did_ manage to tune it out long enough to start sliding slowly towards the black nothingness I was desperately craving, they decided to play the "I don't like the second half of this song, skip to the next one." game. Then to the next one after another thirty seconds. Then again. Then back to the previous one, because "hey! Doesn't it get better after a bit? Or possibly not, so skip around looking for a track I do like."
Speaking of skipping - there's nothing worse than trying to sleep through a CD that's skipping - just a little bit - every 90 seconds or so. Every time your brain picks up the tune and starts to flow with it - Bam! it's knocked right off track again.
Around this time (after I'd been awake for half an hour) Ed arrived back from the pub, so I manfully sent him upstairs, to negotiate with our neighbours as to what constituted a reasonable volume level. Well, actually I asked him to have them all shot, but I expected to be interpreted liberally. What I didn't expect was for them to hide in the flat, creaking the floorboards, but ignoring him knocking on the door. At least when _our_ downstairs neighbour bangs on our door to tell us to shut the fuck up we have the decency to stop battering the floor with baseball bats - not the bozos upstairs though - they were happy to ignore the door _and_ leave the volume up.
And possibly - just possibly, the idea that the people downstairs were upset at them was enough to have them set the CD player to a semi-random track (not Madonna by this time, but some random bland pop-rock track) and leave it on _repeat_. For an _hour_. Well, for an hour until I gave up on the idea of sleeping in my own bed and set up the spare bed in the living room. An idea which I wish I'd had a good hour earlier, when I was still optimistically thinking "Oh well, they're bound to go to bed any minute now."
Next time I'm just calling the fucking police.
Oh - today at work wasn't great - I managed to focus, but spent the entire day feeling drained and unable to actually do much that wasn't urgent. Luckily there wasn't a lot to do, as we were waiting for information to arrive from a variety of places. And now I intend to hang around the house, trying to summon the enthusiasm to watch something on TV, until it's late enough that I can fall asleep.
The people upstairs were playing music, but it wasn't _that_ loud - I was able to fall asleep listening to something quiet, and vaguely ambiently soothing.
This wasn't the case at 1am, when I woke up, badly needing to piss, with the voice of Madonna coming through the ceiling. Now, this wasn't the last Madonna album, it was the earlier poppier stuff, so you can't fault their taste too much - but it was damn loud. Certainly loud enough that I couldn't get back to sleep easily. And when I _did_ manage to tune it out long enough to start sliding slowly towards the black nothingness I was desperately craving, they decided to play the "I don't like the second half of this song, skip to the next one." game. Then to the next one after another thirty seconds. Then again. Then back to the previous one, because "hey! Doesn't it get better after a bit? Or possibly not, so skip around looking for a track I do like."
Speaking of skipping - there's nothing worse than trying to sleep through a CD that's skipping - just a little bit - every 90 seconds or so. Every time your brain picks up the tune and starts to flow with it - Bam! it's knocked right off track again.
Around this time (after I'd been awake for half an hour) Ed arrived back from the pub, so I manfully sent him upstairs, to negotiate with our neighbours as to what constituted a reasonable volume level. Well, actually I asked him to have them all shot, but I expected to be interpreted liberally. What I didn't expect was for them to hide in the flat, creaking the floorboards, but ignoring him knocking on the door. At least when _our_ downstairs neighbour bangs on our door to tell us to shut the fuck up we have the decency to stop battering the floor with baseball bats - not the bozos upstairs though - they were happy to ignore the door _and_ leave the volume up.
And possibly - just possibly, the idea that the people downstairs were upset at them was enough to have them set the CD player to a semi-random track (not Madonna by this time, but some random bland pop-rock track) and leave it on _repeat_. For an _hour_. Well, for an hour until I gave up on the idea of sleeping in my own bed and set up the spare bed in the living room. An idea which I wish I'd had a good hour earlier, when I was still optimistically thinking "Oh well, they're bound to go to bed any minute now."
Next time I'm just calling the fucking police.
Oh - today at work wasn't great - I managed to focus, but spent the entire day feeling drained and unable to actually do much that wasn't urgent. Luckily there wasn't a lot to do, as we were waiting for information to arrive from a variety of places. And now I intend to hang around the house, trying to summon the enthusiasm to watch something on TV, until it's late enough that I can fall asleep.