oi, noisy neighbours

Hear my roar.

I suppose that it’s now a little obvious that I had to go and see the tossers living below me last night because of their infernal racket. At approximately 10.45 the old acoustic guitars came out, 2 of them I think. I carried on reading and duly inserted my earplugs but to no avail. They weren’t gently strumming Stairway to Heaven, they were belting out nauseating tunes and whacking their guitars, stamping their feet on the wooden floor and about 8 of them were belting their lungs out. Bearing in mind that I’ve been up everyday at either 7.30 or 7.45 for the decorators, that I had to be up for 8am this morning for the roofers, that the decorators and lack of sunshine had plunged me into a deep depression that I’m still climbing out of and that hanging about waiting for the decorators to knock on the door is a little tedious, I just wasn’t in the mood for a night of stress and no sleep. They were so loud that they couldn’t hear me smashing my hammer on my futon bass, something I do more gently sometimes to hint that I'm unhappy with the noise. As I was in my PJs and I had no make up on, and because by this point it was 11.45, I just didn’t want to go down there. A quick look out the window revealed that there were 2 visiting cars, so there was a crowd settled in for a long night of noise. However, I was determined to put a stop to it promptly. It’s too depressing listening to it all night and I have rights. So, I looked for a slip of paper with their phone number on and I rang it. No response. On putting away the piece of paper I noticed it was a 2-year-old warning for a birthday party, dated 26 Feb. I experienced instant horror on reading that. And instant reaction. I went down there and rang the doorbell and told the bloke who answered it that I’d be calling the council in 10 minutes if the racket didn’t stop. Don’t forget they gave me 4 hours notice for their last party. They carried on singing and playing music, but at a reasonable level, so it did not end in violence although I fear that it will eventually.

I lulled myself to sleep with pretty thoughts so I was up in time for the roofers (who were all done in 15 minutes as the scaffolding was up) and still managed to go for a jog before college. Although I learned nothing today. After all the other classes if I thought that my work was rubbish I tried again at home. But a few of us today secretly agreed that we’d never look at today’s work again. Collage in mixed media. But next week we are painting so hurrah!!!! I had hung the 2 pieces that I showed you all on the wall and Sir said that they were good and that I should experiment in that format a little. I agree ink is tonnes of fun.

He was holding court today with outrageous, but true, stories of an art gallery beginning with W fleecing artists. I told Sir by the by that I used to work for the Press Office for the Hayward Gallery. Oh he was thrilled and thoroughly grilled me. I told him about the critics and the artist that I had met and he even offered me work doing PR on his forthcoming exhibition. I forget sometimes that I have lived a whole lifetime already and that I’ve spent the last 12 years in jobs that most people don’t even know exist. But I remembered it today when I got some really very filthy looks from some of the students. This was compounded when Sir asked me what I did now. I could feel the pins entering my body all over and I quickly packed my things and left.