28
“Well, what did you expect in an
opera? A happy ending?”
- Bugs Bunny (Warner Brothers).
Neighbour Notes March to April 2011.
1 March. Evening. El Phaba came home about
quarter to twelve and stomped around in shoes, and then again at half twelve.
The Dude (Jeff Bridges): Look, we all know
what’s involved here. What the fuck are you talking about, huh?
Walter (John Goodman): Dude, the Chinaman
is not the issue here…They pee’d on your fucking rug?
The Dude: They pee’d on my fucking rug.
Walter: That’s right Dude, they pee’d on
your fucking rug.
-
The Big Lebrowski (directed by Ethan
and Joel Coen, 1998).
I now have
active hostility with Pakistanis living next door, above me and across the
road. Crazy warrior shit, man! I mean, I’m just doing the best I can within the
law but can you imagine what I’d be driven to if I was free to in a more
primitive society? Well, of course, they
all belonged to the same tribe and probably respected each other, a little bit
at least! But, here, it’s like I am in prison (or a mental home) with inmates
who belong to the same tribe outnumbering me and doing what the hell they want
at my expense.
On 1 March,
I got home at 4.30 p.m. and, at 5 p.m. they started working on a car in the
driveway next door to me just as I was intending to relax for the evening. I
simply went outside and complained, saying something like, ‘You’re not starting
that at this hour are you?’ Interestingly, when I spoke to him this time, the
guy turned round and complained about my having asked his mechanic to go away
previously. Two days later, the mechanic sat in his van for ages with the
window down, chatting away on his mobile phone. [A week later: however, he has
not been back since I wrote down this vehicle registration number while he was
sitting in his car shortly afterwards]. I listened to him intently, realising
that he really is not capable of considering my point of view, and then said,
simply, ‘Ok, this is the last day.’ To which he grumbled and turned away.
Agreeing as though agreeing to disagree, or being bitterly sarcastic. So, I am
now writing a letter to the council to see if anything can be done about the
situation. Although I am now officially battling against three sets of
Pakistani neighbours, which has caused my mood to drop somewhat, I also feel
more hopeful now that I am actually doing something about it and not just
putting up with the noise. It also helps to calm my fury and latent desire to
go out and do some damage. There is no need for violence, ever!
PUT-HIM-IN-THE-CURRY!
There is a
Spike Milligan sketch titled ‘Pakistani Daleks’ which portrays life at home
with the Daleks. Daddy Dalek (Spike) comes home from work wearing a white
handkerchief on his ‘head’ and crashes into the dinner table several times as
his human wife attempts to lay out the cutlery (almost as if he is drunk). The
dalek eventually pushes the crockery onto the floor and she attempts to lay the
table with what remains on it. “I’m sorry I’m late,” says the dalek. “The tubes
were full of commuters.” When his wife asks how he got on (the train) he
explains that he exterminated them. She makes him a cup of tea and asks how Mr.
Banaji is. The dalek replies, “HE’S-NOT-VERY-WELL.” “Why?” asks his wife.
“I-EXTERMINATED-HIM.” The dalek then exterminates the dog when it barks and
says, “PUT-HIM-IN-THE-CURRY.” He then exterminates granny who is sitting in an
armchair. Then a smaller dalek enters from another door. It’s their son.
“Johnny, have you finished your homework?” asks the mother. The son replies, “YES-I-HAVE-DESTROYED-IT.”
She then says, “Someone has exterminated granny!” To this, daddy dalek responds
predictably, “YES-PUT-HER-IN-THE-CURRY-AS-WELL.” A bird in a cage then starts
talking: “Hello sailor. Hello sailor.” And is promptly exterminated! “PUT-HIM-IN-THE-CURRY,”
says the dalek. His wife then ends the sketch, telling the audience, “Now you
know what’s wrong with the country.” Daddy dalek continues firing randomly
around the room and says, “PUT-IT-ALL-IN-THE-CURRY.” His wife adds: “Now you
know what’s wrong with the curry!”
A comment
on YouTube: “The sketch is in fact mocking the social attitudes to mixed
relationships in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Spike Milligan wasn’t racist
but would often take racial stereotypes and make them so absurd as to be
ridiculous.” In view of the title, the main dalek is clearly meant to be a
portrayal of a Pakistani man who is married to an English wife. The association
being so absurd, Spike Milligan, who was born in Pune, India, is showing us how
blaming immigrants for everything is equally absurd. In the 70s, there were a large
number of bigots who had never even met a coloured person and regarded them as
aliens and less-than-human and harboured many false beliefs about how they
lived. It is as though it were daleks who ‘come over here, take all the jobs
and breed like rabbits.’ Then we might have something to complain about.
Ordinary Asian people, however, are just human beings. And, it is not as if we
have anything to fear such as them destroying everything and killing everyone
in sight – and putting it in the curry! (Because, of course, another popular
myth has been that Asian people put ‘goodness knows what’ in the curry - a new
phenomenon for many Brits at the time – possibly even dogs).
5 March. From about 12.45 a.m. the noise
coming from a silver PSV parked next door kept me awake. It belongs to the guy
over the road. The noise sounded like a loud fan. I went outside to see what it
was and the lights in his house, upstairs and downstairs, were on. This has
never happened before so I am assuming that it is deliberate after our exchange
the other day. The noise lasted about an hour and I couldn’t sleep until it
stopped although I kept telling myself it was not too loud to prevent me from
sleeping.
I’m
surrounded by bandits from the same country who have come to this town expecting
to do whatever they want. It is like living in a hornet’s nest! I feel like I
have been ambushed by the Japs during WWII and they are closing in and want to
take over and throw me in a POW camp. I do feel like I am out of my depth here.
It’s starting to get to me again, to be honest.
I feel a
bit like Rango the chameleon in the children’s cartoon film that has just come
out in the cinema. According to a description in a local newspaper, Rango is “a new twist on the classic
Western legend of the outside who saves a town – and himself in the process.”
“When Rango
(Depp) accidentally winds up in the gritty, gun-slinging town of Dirt – plagues
by bandits – the less-than-courageous lizard finds he stands out. Welcomes as
the last hope the town has been waiting for, new Sheriff Rango is forced to
play his new role to the hilt until, in a blaze of action-packed situations and
encounters with outrageous characters, Rango starts to become the hero he once
only pretended to be.”
There's a new sheriff in town
6 March. Oh, my favourite pastime: being
woken up at 7 a.m. on a Sunday and listening to Fabala stomping around and
dropping things on the floor for half-an-hour before going out! As I have
already pointed out, the stomping and dropping things often go hand-in-hand.
They either occur at the same time or there is some stomping followed
immediately by objects being dropped on the floor. This is usually just for a
minute or two, morning and evening (often more than once), but sometimes
longer. If she is off work - at the weekends, for example - she makes sure she
drops things on the floor periodically. During the evening, the Ha Chus were
knocking on my wall with a solid object for 5 or 10 minutes at 10.15 p.m. this
was followed by noise off and on for an hour.
7 March. In the morning, of course, I
received my daily dose of torture from upstairs! In fact, I ended up going to
bed very late again and, being woken up early, appears to have triggered this
cold that has been lingering in my body for the past month or more. At least
it’s all coming out now but I did feel like a total wreck all day today!
10 March. I have a cold at the moment and I
am receiving the same treatment as last year. It has not been so noisy this
year, however, so Fabala only learned about it yesterday. She let out a loud
fake sneeze last night and again this morning along with a whole circus show of
dropping items on the floor for ages. She definitely earned her sugar lumps!
12 March. Saturday. I have no idea what El
Phaba was doing upstairs this afternoon but it was unbearably loud and I hope
it is a one-off rather than a regular act in the circus. It sounded like a
rowing machine or similar exercise apparatus. I heard a sliding sound followed
by a loud thud on the floor repeated over and over and over again. I happened
to watch a comedy programme afterwards and I was killing myself with laughter.
As a result, El Phaba dropped something on the floor that was the loudest noise
to date, I swear! She also did another fake ‘sneeze’ as loudly as possible a
little while later.
13 March. Very loud knocking on the wall with
a solid object next door at 10.25 in the evening. I got up and went over to the
wall and shouted, ‘You do NOT want to do that, fucker!’ I doubt if they could
hear the words but, hopefully, they got the message anyway!
14 March. Evening. El Phaba put some music on
when she got home in the evening which was just loud enough to be annoying. She
then tried her new exercise machine at 7.30 which is ludicrously loud! I put
some loud-ish music on. She stopped but then started again. I stood on the bed
and shouted up, ‘Shut the fuck up!!’ She stepped again and put the radio on in
her bedroom. It was loud but not earth-shattering like the other times.
15 March. Ha Chu, a grown man, let out a fake
sneeze at 4.10 p.m. I’m pretty sure it was the most fake-sounding one to date!
He is out of practice! In fact, he did it three times in a row perhaps to make
up for his blunder. The third one was much better. Haha.
On 16
March, at 1.07 a.m., I had a fleeting but powerful vision of wearing a white
robe (with some purple on) and being some kind of priest on a higher dimension
(perhaps with M and co?). There was a faint feeling of joy and fulfilment
associated with this plane of who I am. If I could raise my self-awareness to
this level and then relate to my earthly life from there I might have more
self-love and faith as well as a deeper sense of purpose and interest in living
on this planet.
16 March. El Phaba is just very noisy every
morning and today she, too, tried a couple of fake sneezes whilst dropping
things on the floor at the same time. Then, at 6.05 p.m., Ha Chu followed suit with
another loud ‘sneeze.’ And again at 9.26. Getting some practice in.
17 March. I got home early and Ha Chu let rip
a really, really loud ‘achoo’ right by the wall at exactly 4 p.m. So, it was
worth all the practice after all! lol.
Rattlesnake Jake from Rango
“Learn to
love with all your heart and accept the unlovable side of others...For anyone
can love a rose, but only a great heart can include the thorns.” – Unknown.
19 March. Someone next door heard me turn the
light off when I went to bed at 12.40 am (I’m usually quieter just in case) and
knocked on a wooden cabinet or something for about 40 seconds. At 11.08 a.m.,
there were three sneezes in succession upstairs which actually sounded real
even though I’m sure they weren’t! Perhaps she has been taking lessons from Ha
Chu! This was followed swiftly by solid objects being dropped on the lino
floor. She then put on some loud dance music at 11.30 which she then turned up
six minutes later. It is the radio as usual. She turned it down at 12.40. This
was inevitably her response to the full moon. Sad! Loud knocking on the wall
next door at 11.17 p.m.
Yeah, Fabala
can only handle loud music for an hour and even then she just listens to any
old crap on the radio! People who are not really into music cannot go the
distance. I could listen to loud music (of my choice) all day if I wanted to.
There is so much music I love. I was talking to two black guys once and they
got on to the subject of rap music, at which point my interest in the
conversation started to decline until I eventually offered an opinion. One of
the guys asked me what music I’m into and, when I told him, he smiled and his
eyes lit up. He told me he couldn’t relate to anyone who was not passionate
about music in one form or another, as though he were suggesting they had no
soul!
20 March. El Phaba arrived home just as the
neighbours’ 4x4 was pulling into the driveway at 5.32 p.m. Maybe there is a
sneezing training centre I am unaware of.
21 March. 4 or 5 young Asian guys parked
outside at 2.50. They must have stopped for a fag I think. They were talking
and laughing loudly right outside my window. Having been woken up by the
assault, I got out of bed and banged on the window. I was too tired to go out
and tell them to fuck off. One of them asked what I wanted and I replied,
‘Sleep!’ which he heard and understood immediately. They drove off after that.
I was unable to get back to sleep, however. In the evening, El Phaba had her TV
on fairly loud and then used that rowing/exercise machine around 8.30 p.m. My
God! It’s louder than I remembered. Response: very loud Motorhead for an hour. No Sleep Til Hammersmith. An all-round
war is kicking off here again. I swear the Ha Chus made a young child cry purposefully at 11.20 p.m. in an effort to
piss me off! They also knocked on the wall off and on until 12.30 a.m.
22 March. A loud fake ‘sneeze’ from Hachu
Hichu at 11.35 a.m.
23 March. I came home for lunch and some Asian
men were building a brick wall down at the end of the road. They were playing
Asian music full blast! On my way out again, I went and talked to them. I was
just going to write down their company name and telephone number but there was
no sign on their PSV so I asked one guy for a business card. I was going to
explain that I intended to ring the company to complain about the noise if they
asked (albeit after they had given me
a card). It turned out that it was a local family helping relatives so I simply
told him that if they didn’t turn the music down I would call the council out.
He smiled and turned it off asking me if that was alright, by which time I was
walking away and simply turned round and nodded. Actually, I don’t think I
nodded because I had not asked him to turn the music off. I just warned him
what would happen if he didn’t turn it down. It was more like a subtle shrug. I
was bluffing on this occasion anyway although partly because I was not at home.
“Love God
and He will enable you to love others even when they disappoint you.” -
Francine Rivers.
26 March. El Phaba came home with some people,
including children, and immediately used the ‘rowing machine’ for five minutes.
It IS incredibly loud! And just as I was about to meditate!! I was tempted to
go and ask what the noise was but I was scared of losing my temper. Such is the
impotence of English men in our time. I don’t seem to have recorded the other
instances of this noise. I have just played loud music in response each time.
28 March. I got home at 11.30 p.m. and her
boyfriend’s car was parked in the street outside. My path was blocked in the
dark hallway. I bumped into something and couldn’t seem to move it out of the
way. So, I switched the light on to see what it was. There were two sections of
a retail clothing rail and the one that was in my way I simply lifted up and
threw on the stairs with the other part. After a few minutes of being in my
flat Elphie’s boyfriend rushed down and took the contraption out to his car. I
am wondering if that is what she was rolling around the floor!! Very strange
behaviour though. And what was the loud clunk on the floor at the end of each
lap? Perhaps she was using it purely as some kind of torture device!
29 March. El Phaba appears to have a week off
work and, foolishly, she is making more noise than ever: last night and this
evening. And, this evening, whilst I meditated, she walked around and crashed
about for the whole hour!
30 March. El Phaba got home just after 9 p.m.
and again spent quite some time dropping things on the floor to try and annoy
me. I just put Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor on loud enough to
prevent it from affecting me. I can just about deal with the idea that someone
is being that nasty towards me it if does not do any other harm. These are
people who want to ruin my quality of life, not that it is in tip top condition
anyway! Late in the evening, the Ha Chus were knocking on the wall. I said to
myself that if they did it once more I would get up and do something about it
(I hadn’t yet gone to bed). They knocked much louder than before so I got up,
banged two metal trays together in the air in the other room to wake El Phaba
up and shouted ‘Fuck off!’ Force being the only language these lowlife idiots
understand.
“Everything
that you do in meditation, spiritual practices, with your intentions and loving
actions throughout the day influences those around you as well as enhancing
your own spiritual growth. When you meditate you are not only meditating for
yourself but for all of humanity, for all that is the Creator on the Earth and
inner planes. Know that you are being of service at all times through your
simple desire to connect with the Creator. Many people ask us what their
purpose is. We say to you that you are already living your purpose now you are
already being of service; you just have to realise and believe this.” – The
Ascended Masters (channelled through Natalie Glasson,
‘Being of Service, Part 3,’ 28 March 2011, www.omna.org).
31 March. Yes, things have turned nasty here!
Some as yesterday: in the evening, El Phaba spent a good deal of her time walking
around in shoes and, not so much ‘dropping’ things as throwing things at the
floor and just whacking it with something. At one point, this was
excruciatingly loud. I meditated through it all again but I did not enter a
deep meditation so there was some unpleasantness to experience. This lasted for
an hour or so but there was a bit more to come before she went to bed. At 10.45
p.m., I stood on a chair and made some noise of my own for a minute or so in
close proximity to where she sleeps. After that, the cat wanted more food and,
as I bent down to place it in his bowl, I felt a sneeze coming. Consequently, I
stood up and let rip!
There has
been no repeat of that awful noise so I guess it must have been the clothes
rail and not a rowing machine! Crazy! Thank God for Motorhead and Mendelssohn!
[Note: 5
minutes after writing up this week’s notes the phone rang. I paused to see if
anyone spoke, which they did not, and then said ‘Hello’ and they hung up].
“Don’t give
in to hate. That leads to the dark side.” – Obi Wan Knobe.
As for the
guy over the road, he has resumed business again but in a less conspicuous way
which includes not working on vehicles in the driveway next door. In fact, he
has removed the empty bottles of oil, dirty rags and so on, and moved the car
bumper to his own driveway. I took some photos of the mechanic and a couple of
their customers while they worked in the street which was quite amusing. Just
in case I need to provide any evidence of what they have been doing here. The
mechanic is seriously worried about this for some reason and has pretty much
stopped coming here. Interestingly, as I passed a newsagent’s on the bus one
afternoon (23 March), I saw a headline advertising a local newspaper which read
‘Death In Unlicensed Garage Home.’
3 April. The Ha Chus have a couple of their
daughters and their friend over for the weekend. One of them ‘coughed’ loudly
as they always do now before they start such a get-together. I find this
behaviour quite stupid because that is more likely to make me angry than
anything. They started talking about ten minutes later and El Phaba magically
arrived him at that precise moment. Part of me (my ego) wanted to play some
loud music in protest but I simply was not in the mood and did not allow this
reaction to take over although, the usual plan, is to deter them from doing
this kind of thing in the future.
5 April. A guy from the Noise Abatement team
at the council called today in response to my second enquiry and reminder that
it was three weeks since I wrote to them and no one had contacted me (they said
someone would call within 5 days). He claims to have called me a few times and
also visited the street to check the situation, hoping to get lucky. In fact,
he reckons he was here yesterday morning. I told him it’s a shame I didn’t have
his number because the mechanics were working on a vehicle for about 6 hours
yesterday afternoon and only finished at 7.15 p.m. I pointed out that there are
often two or three cars parked there which slows the traffic down and could
cause an accident one day. We agreed that there are many issues besides the
noise at stake here and he said he can notify the appropriate departments
(Trading Standards, street cleaning and parking) once he has observed things
firsthand. He gave me the numbers for his office and told me to call them out
when they are working in the street again. He implied that this situation is
not so unusual and that Asians sometimes prefer to repair vehicles in the
street for cash in hand than rent somewhere purpose-built which they could
easily do.
10 April. Sunday. There must be some kind of
wedding or something because the Hachoos have being going out and coming back
for little parties for the last couple of days. I stayed up on Friday night and
was lucky that the noise ceased not long after I had gone to bed. Last night, I
wore ear plugs but woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to
sleep again. One thing I have noticed whenever the Ha Chus have people over for
a Friday/Saturday night party, El Phaba always stays in and is mysteriously quiet for the whole evening. I crashed around
when I got up not long after 8 a.m. I am aware of having lost the battle with
El Phaba who is now going all out and abusing her power exuberantly, making as
much noise as possible, dropping things on the floor for half-an-hour in the
mornings and frequently dropping things on the floor throughout the weekends
when she is at home. I have no real deterrent anymore. Only extremes will work.
All I can do is show her that there are still some consequences of her destructive actions at least in the hope
of reducing the number of ‘bombs’ dropped in my direction! Damage control, in
other words.
Facebook
friend:
Yeah all is good here. So have you
just got in from a night out??
Facebook friend: Ha! No..I wish..my life isn't that
exiting these days..I just woke up because the neighbour has been roaring up
and down the road on his bike...
Me [later in the morning]: We should all have our own
sweet little community somewhere peaceful and sunny. Cities are for visiting
not living in. I woke up at 3.30 a.m. because my neighbours had another party
and I find ear plugs uncomfortable. In fact, I had a dream that I met an old
friend who was telling me he drives diggers and bulldozers for a living and he
has trouble with his ears from wearing ear plugs all day. LOL.
13 April. 16.50 p.m. An Asian man has been
walking up and down the pavement outside my house talking so loudly on his mobile. I eventually went out and told him, ‘Oi,
mate, if you’re going to walk around shouting would you mind doing it outside
your own house?’ After ignoring me initially he signalled ‘OK’ with his arm
when I turned round again. The truth is, many people living round here now are
loud and ignorant. I often hear Asian men talking loudly as they walk past late
in the evening or in the early hours of the morning which just never happened
at all until the last year or two really.
"We
must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the
power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the
worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less
prone to hate our enemies."- Martin Luther King, Jr.
I am not,
of course, as stated previously, including a record of every time the woman
upstairs made my life hell by dropping things frequently and repeatedly as well
as ten times more loudly than she used to in the past. It would just be
ridiculous because she did it practically every day ever since that week when
she got the landlord to stop me playing loud music in the mornings. This period
was sheer mayhem and surpassed any period of such length in the past in terms
of noise.
17 April. Sunday. El Phaba had her sister’s
kids to stay overnight. This morning at 9.10 a.m. she made that phenomenally
loud noise again with whatever the contraption is that she has acquired. It is
not a rowing machine or the clothes rail. There was much less of a rhythm on
this occasion. Less sliding and more clunking!
24 April. Easter Sunday. During sunny weather
the quality of life should increase! Often, however, it doesn’t because
selfish, ignorant and aggressive people pollute the atmosphere with loud noise
from the stereos in their cars and homes and ruin it for everybody.
Consequently, despite the sunshine, there was no tai chi or relaxing in the
garden this afternoon. Ruined. What gives you the right to ruin everyone’s
Sunday afternoon - or Easter? Jamaica: coming to a garden near you!
27 April. A young child was making a lot of
noise in the front room near my bed from 11 p.m. onwards. Ha Chu then made a
loud, fake sneeze at 11.30 p.m. I was in bed trying to get to sleep.
28 April. When I went out to do tai chi in
the garden around midday the neighbours came outside and made a lot of noise
just for 15 minutes or so to disturb me. Then, in the evening, Maltesers did
some fake coughing. Oh yeah, because I also released a loud shout and rattled a
few pans in the kitchen this afternoon when I heard someone in the toilet next
door. So I played a Motorhead album loud in both rooms. El Phaba must have come
home after a couple of songs and fuck her too! At 6.36 p.m., I heard lots of
shouting in the street and climbed up onto the table to look over the hedge,
out the window, to see what was going on. A well-built Asian guy had stopped
his 4x4 (Land Rover, I think) and he was furious with a black youth who must
have kicked or thrown something at his vehicle I guess. He kept repeating, ‘Why
did you do that?’ And went for him a couple of times but there were a few other
black youths with him. I am not sure if they were all together because they
went off in different directions afterwards (in pairs). A Bengali man in a
smart light-grey suit, in his 30s, who happened to be around at the time was
bravely distracting a couple of the youths and deterring them from possibly
attacking the driver. Kind of weird because I just cut the hedge on the other
side today after breaking a two-day fast (i.e. I was BEAT!). So, it would have
been much easier to see over. I wanted to know what the trouble was and if
anyone was getting a rough deal and may need help. Later, at 10.45 p.m.,
Maltesers’ loud, fake cough was met with me dropping the cat’s metal tray on
the floor in the other room beneath El Phaba’s bed. I also slammed the kitchen
door handle against the metal filing cabinet a couple times.
PLAY: ‘One of Those Days in England by Roy
Harper’ (1977). Why? Cuz this ain’t England!
Retrospective
insert.
‘Condone or Condemn?’ by Sananda (channelled through Christopher Sell, 21 February 2013, www.heaven-on-earth.co.uk).
“If you love unconditionally, does this mean you
condone harm?
Should you not condemn a hurtful act? Let us unpack
this so that it becomes clearer.
When you harm another, you harm yourself. How are you best to be helped
from this behaviour? Let us consider why you might bring harm to another. The
only reason is that some part of you is crying out for love; that part feels so
bad about itself that it lashes out in despair. It believes it cannot be loved.
So your unconditional love for that part or that person who brings harm is the
beginning of a healing process.
Does this mean that you must stand aside when harm is done? No, for you
are free to act from love also. Your love may prompt you to step in and do whatever
you may to stop further harm and to heal
what has already happened. You can do this most effectively without recourse to
blame, for blame begins to create a separation of one from another that
unconditional love seeks to dissolve.
Above all be kind to yourself, for in kindness to yourself you model the
love of the Source of All.”
King
Arthur
(Graham Chapman): [After Arthur's cut
off both of the Black Knight's arms] Look, you stupid Bastard.
You've got no arms left.
Black Knight (John Cleese): Yes I have.
King Arthur: *Look*!
Black Knight: It's just a flesh wound.
Black Knight (John Cleese): Yes I have.
King Arthur: *Look*!
Black Knight: It's just a flesh wound.
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail (directed by Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones,
1975).
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