Greetings Pop Pickers

Greetings pop pickers

Hello again here’s a post about noise abatement and nuisance neighbours.

A lot of the time where I live is pretty quiet, but when South Leeds wants to party they turn it up to 11.

By far the majority of people on my street are quiet and keep themselves to themselves. Ok we don’t really mix a great deal but I don’t think we upset each other either.

A couple of years ago I became very familiar with the out of hours noise abatement team from Leeds City Council due to a couple of particularly noisy neighbours.

There were two households that contributed to mine, and I would have thought everyone else’s misery by generally being what I like to call a ‘bunch of bastards’.

In back to back terraces the sound proofing is pretty thin so you can hear an awful lot of what’s going on either side and at the back of you; particularly as every room in your house touches a room in someone else’s. You can hear vacuum cleaners, computer games, chatting, laughing, shouting, music, telly, people walking up stairs, snoring, giggling in the bath and alarms going off in the morning.

Most of these noises are pretty normal, and as you’re moving about your own house, you don’t really notice it and most likely contribute to it, in fact I’d probably miss the day to day stuff if it wasn’t there; it’s just the sound of ordinary people going about their lives.

I should also point out that I’m not averse to a party, in fact I’ve thrown a few of my own (and been at a few where the neighbours have called the police to get us to be quiet in my younger days), however never night after night at the same house.  Everyone’s entitled to throw a party now and again. It’s the persistent offenders that really cause the problems.

A big gripe with persistent offenders would be about the quality of the music played at full volume. Why do you never hear Tchaikovsky, Bowie, Joni Mitchell or Roxy Music blaring out from their stereos? It’s always something excruciating like Scooter or some other dreadful techno crap, either that or Country and Western.

I like a bit of C&W by the way, but it’s not the good stuff that gets blasted out, oh no! Apparently if you’re an anti social drunk with volume control issues the good stuff isn’t what you want to listen to over and over again at 2 a.m., you want to listen to Billy Ray Cyrus’s Achy Breaky Heart, and you want everybody else in a 500 metre radius to listen to it with you!

Also why is there never a selection of tunes, no it’s too much like hard work to drag yourself up off your booze addled backside and change the CD. Simply put Billy Ray on repeat, preferably just the one song for hours and hours and hours . . . . . . at full volume. Or pull your car up outside your pre pubescent girlfriend’s house and play your shitty techno at full blast in the street. Everybody loves that.

In one spectacularly disturbing incident a persistent offender, previously reported to and witnessed by the Noise Abatement team, selected a series of appropriate karaoke tunes over which to shout racist epithets and threats at full volume from midnight to 2.a.m.

Now I’m not a racist socially incompetent loser so I’m not sure I’d have picked the same play list, however let’s have a guess at what aural treats bombarded my delicate ears that evening; a touch of Screwdriver perhaps? No?

What about some thrash metal or hardcore rap, no?  Some Wagner perhaps? No, not Wagner either.

You’re right of course, the perfect accompaniment to an evening of racist ranting is yes, you guessed it, ‘Lucky’ by Britney Spears; a simple tale of one starlet’s struggle to find comfort in the harsh realities of showbiz.

Then what to follow? Yes it’s an obvious choice; Leanne Rimes’ ‘Can’t fight the moonlight’, that well known right wing anthem. It’s even better if you know all the words and can sing along in a drunken slurry fashion (but not in tune), those cheeky racist drunks and their karaoke machines.

This was a fairly typical occurrence, at least twice a week for months and months and months. And as if the random music choices and racist shouting weren’t enough it was often accompanied by door slamming and wall banging. And sometimes if I was lucky the music would come to an unexpected halt when their CD player got stuck on one note, at full volume, for 20 minutes at a time – imagine that if you can. Like I said earlier, bastards!

However all of this torture did abruptly come to an end when they set fire to the house and were re-housed.  Shame that.

Thanks for reading.