Away.
I am going to London for a week and haven't been for about three months which is unheard of. There seems no reason to be there as I don't want to see anyone and the horrible crowds drive me mad and I can't stand hearing other people through the walls. We live in building hell as our street is full of huge houses which over the years have been turned into smaller and smaller flats. We are also now in one of the trendiest parts of London so each new owner is more assholey and keener to make their new home cutting edge than the last. I can't remember when our crumbling 'old-school' flat didn't reverberate to the sound of crashing and hammering from some time in the morning when you would normally be asleep. It makes it so much worse to have lived there in the golden age of charming undiscoveredness when most of the street were friends and asked each other to their parties. Most of the flats were rented then and full of retired academics for some reason. The street window box competition was the high point of the year. All so totally, totally gone now.

Also, then, I was the only person in the street with children. Now there are spoilt, screamy young children in THREE of the flats in my building alone. Fuck off from the stairs and stop whining, for god's sake. The most irritating live on the top floor and have literally never gone up or down without some moaning scene outside our door about how they want to be carried because it is all too much. The parents believe in low-voiced wet reasoning with them - while a sharp slap and a fireman's lift are obviously the only answer. My fingers itch to deliver it myself .. the former .. or maybe the latter if it was down to hell.

I daren't even consider my blood pressure while I am there. How has everyone become so smugly, arrogantly selfish about making noise? It is normal in the summer for parties to be held on the roofs, five stories up and unfortunately all flat in the middle. I would say the music carries clearly for half a mile at least but no one could give a f.ck. Last year the people next door were partying with all the balcony doors open at 5.00 am when I snapped and woke my son. He climbed dangerously over the divide and went in, found the owner and asked her to turn the music down. Baying cries of 'WTF? F.ck off. It's just a party. etc.'. filled the air combined with blank incomprehension that anyone should be so selfish as to spoil their fun.
Large amounts of the time while I am in my own flat I sit there feeling besieged and longing to kill. This is not some middle-aged weirdo breakdown as all my children feel exactly the same and spend much time writing vicious notes to neighbours or ringing up the local council. This, as I said, is since the area has filled up with richer people .. quite a few of whom are 'celebrities'.

When, when is the wheel going to turn and my street become so last year that they all bugger off and ruin another part of the city? It had better be soon or I am buying a m@chine g.n through Am@zon and may well be unafraid to use it.

- posted by Iris @ 1/05/2005 10:59:00 AM comment