Well I’m back with another post in lieu of anything exciting happening on my street this week, other than a loud domestic one evening over the week-end that is. . It’s been a busy week in general for me, but we have another Group meeting next week so hopefully more news about actual regeneration then.
This post harks back to good old London town and some little anecdotes about yet another delightful couple move into an adjoining flat. As previously mentioned the house I rented with friends down in Battersea was flanked by flats on either side. On one side the improbably awful Wayne and Waynetta and the sporadically insane Ricky and Bianca above them – ahh the joy.
On the other side the ground floor flat was occupied by a lovely elderly gentleman, who for the purposes of this post I shall call Austin, and the upstairs flat that had been empty for some time. After a reorganisation of flatmates I moved to the upstairs main bedroom, which shared a wall with the living rooms of the upstairs flats on both sides.
About this time, I think possibly before I moved upstairs, one of my housemates, or it could have been me I genuinely forget now, bumped into Austin outside our front door. He was very keen to share the news that the flat above him was going to be occupied at last, but particularly pleased that his newly proposed neighbours had knocked on his door to introduce themselves and ask if it was a nice neighbourhood.
Austin was delighted that they seemed to care about where they lived and wanted it to be somewhere quiet. This boded well for them he thought and he wanted us to be reassured, given the trouble we had with ‘the people on the other side’.
So the gossip was passed on and we awaited our new neighbours’ arrival. Soon enough they appeared, a middle aged couple who were pleasant and friendly and seemingly keen to make a good impression. They were really polite and always up for a chat when you saw them in the street for the first few weeks. Amazing, what could possibly go wrong!?
I don’t know if you’re familiar with the telly series Father Ted, but apart from being one of the funniest things on T.V. ever, at least one lot of characters began to feel very familiar over the following few months. John and Mary O'Leary lived in the village on Craggy Island and ran a little shop. To the outside observer they were just like our new neighbours, polite and friendly and always happy to see you. But in private they were filled with a deep and destructive loathing of each other, just like our new neighbours. Yes you guessed it, another noise abatement issue had moved in next door.
It started off with the odd raised voice, mostly overheard through the wall of the upstairs bedroom which shared a wall with their living room, but gradually these altercations became more frequent and much louder. The intermittent bouts of domestic disturbance were fuelled by lovely alcohol but without any sound proofing on the walls to conceal it from their neighbours, we all got to listen in. The rows were abusive and vitriolic and the language, good heavens the language!
“You effing C**t”, from her to him “You b**ch”, from him to her and “You lazy C**t” from her to him. Well mostly it was from her to him as I remember it. He was a man of few words; she was a woman who more than made up for his taciturn manner.
I think her liberal use of the ‘C’ word in private was all the more unsettling given her demeanour in public, which veered towards the Hyacinth Bucket when you bumped into them outside the front door. It was difficult to match up the public and private personas of the O’Learys but also because they were SO unlike our other challenging neighbours who couldn’t have given a toss what anyone thought of them, the O’Learys so obviously did care.
Though oddly they (and by ‘they’ I mean ‘she’) were less bothered about glossing over other areas of their private lives. I don’t know what it is about some people, but if a neighbour politely asks how you are they don’t actually want to know, unless they’re sitting next to your hospital bed or a very close friend. It’s a widely recognised social norm that this is a question that requires a non specific response.
If you see someone on the street once a week and they say ‘Hello, how’re you?” for goodness sake DO reply “Oh you know, mustn’t grumble” (my Grandma’s favourite) or, “Fine thanks”. DO NOT go into great gynaecological detail about your latest surgical exploration – I DON’T WANT TO KNOW! Don’t use phrases like “stitches in my back passage” or talk about your prostate to a virtual stranger, Hell’s Teeth people preserve a little dignity!
OK, now that’s out of my system let’s get back to the O’Learys. After a regular run down of her up and coming surgeries and his crippling back problems that rendered it difficult for him to work (though not too difficult to lift a pallet of beer out of the car I noticed on more than one occasion) we began to notice that his attitude shifted from the quiet down trodden hubby, to a man that realised he was living next door to three twenty something women in fancy London town.
To be fair he wasn’t creepy, just excitable, particularly if we arrived at the front door at similar times say just after pub closing time. On a couple of occasions we had to step over him as he lay sleeping drunkenly across the doorstep or in his miniscule front yard, ahhh I feel quite nostalgic about it now. I’ve also just remembered the time I didn’t notice he was asleep outside his own house until my housemate pointed it out after I got in, he was tucked in under the hedge – bless.
We were generally less angry with them about their shouting than our other horrid neighbours, perhaps because we’re British and therefore too polite or maybe it’s just easier to confront someone you don’t discuss the weather with on a regular basis, but also because I think they so obviously thought it was a private matter. It didn’t spill out onto the street, well the drunken snoring stuff did but the nasty shouty stuff was all inside so we all just pretended that it didn’t happen. We even got used to it, the ever indispensible earplugs came in handy as did loud music with headphones on. The O’Learys’ disturbances were nowhere near as frequent as our other neighbours incidentally, they just added a little spice and intrigue to the mix.
I couldn’t find a clip of The O’Learys but here are some clips on YouTube of Father Ted for those who’ve never seen it.
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