The misadventures of one American

I sat on the windowsill on Friday and had a listen to the visitors to downstairs. It wasn't hard, or particularly taxing. The girl that lives diagonal to us has a voice that could penetrate the standing Berlin Wall. But even with a sound that seemed like it came from next to me, I could only make out certain phrases and sentences. The Wigan accent, whilst not lilting or particularly irritating, is thick and brutish, a mix of hard vowels, dropped words and strange tenses. Interpreting it can be interesting.

What I did hear were a number of things about my husband and I. Like what to do if the council asks you if you were playing music, 'I just say no....' she trailed off, apparently making some kind of gesture. The insinuation being, lying is easy. A light bulb went on over my head and I realized why the estate manager hadn't believed us. As bizarre and paranoid as it sounds, we'd been ganged up on. I remembered what Dot told me 'you're outsiders here. They stick with their own.'

The girl from 14 went on to say we 'needed to understand we aren't the end all be all.' Because, apparently, wanting to go to sleep at a reasonable time meant we thought we were. I thought it meant I wanted to go to work without a splitting headache and some modicum of awareness. I guess not.

I couldn't understand much more, so I closed the window and plonked back down on the couch. I don't know how it all got this far. My husband and I didn't and don't see them as enemies. We see them as neighbors, just ones we don't pay a lot of attention to. Our first interaction with Lyndsey, the diagonal neighbor, was when we came home from dinner with friends to find the whole block having a party. On a Sunday night/Monday morning. It went until 3:00am.

A few times she showed she was a little saner than our direct next door neighbor, the Alcoholic. When he accused us of banging on the load bearing concrete wall between our flats during their... intimate... times, she looked at him as strangely as we did.

But somehow, through all of our noise complaints and intolerance of their behavior, we've become their enemy. Because Lyndsey can stay up until 4:00am on workdays, we should be able to as well. And no doubt this is also in some small part due to our getting next door a Good Behavior Agreement (expired in February, sadly.) Emma downstairs sees that as us 'ruining people's lives.' I saw it as an assurance of a peaceful life.

I can't understand this mentality. When I thought I was disturbing people in the past, I was only belligerent if they hadn't spoken to me first. And we tried and tried to talk to them. The girl at 14 had the gall to tell us not to bang on her door at 4:00am when her music was too loud 'from Paris to Berlin in every disco I get in.....' I think you can damned well beat on anything disturbing you at 4:00 in the morning. And no loud music at 2:00am for next door turned into blaring music throughout the apartment during the day that you could hear over everything.

Emma and Dom downstairs and no doubt the Alcoholic and Lyndsey say they have 'rights.' What about ours? What about mine right now to be free of fear from retribution because we allegedly live in a civilized society? What about not setting up cameras to watch the car at night? Or know I can sleep? Do I forgo those because I choose to live in a neighborhood that isn't middle class? Does benefit dependency mean a lack of respect for everyone around you? Or are we unreasonable?

Either way, the next 2 months will be rough.