things i prefer about the uk election:

• pre-election campaigning is largely limited to a month. the official election period began at the start of april, and it’ll all be over with by the 6th of may.
• three genuine major parties. you’ve got the conservatives, labour, and the liberal democrats, who, whilst not as big as the top two, play a significant and important spoiler role. plus lost of smaller parties who (theoretically) stand a chance of winning a seat in parliament.
• less emphasis on personality. with 3 party leaders who couldn’t charm their way out of a wet paper bag (and a prime minister who perpetually looks like he’s got a bee up his bum), uk elections are much less about what the candidates look like and how they come across on television.
• less television campaigning. the uk recently held its first televised leader’s debates – much ballyhooed as becoming “more american” in the way in which elections are conducted.
• no silly electoral college.

things i prefer about the us elections:

• held on a regular, predictable day, at regular, predictable 4 year intervals. none of this waiting for an announcement stuff, as if it’s some kind of electoral surprise.
• voting for a leader, not a leading party. the last election, people voted for tony blair’s labour party, and then halfway through, got the bait-and-switch gordon brown. that irks me.
• less paper waste through my mailbox, fewer people campaigning door-to-door. i know i shouldn’t begrudge them my time, but when i’m constantly answering the buzzer during dinner, it gets annoying. and *all the trees* being killed by parties trying to get me to vote for them. at least television adds don’t clutter up my recycling bin, and robo-calls can go straight to voicemail.
• less emphasis on class background. there are no real parallels in the us to the uk class distinctions, but people in the us do not generally expect their leaders to have come from the same socio-economic background as themselves
• term limits

even with all the differences, i’ve got a dreadful sense of deja vu building in my stomach. most pundits seem to think the tories/conservatives will be in power by friday – it all feels a lot like the 2000 us elections, when the incumbent/heir to the throne *should* have had an easy ride to the polls… but somehow managed to pull defeat from the jaws of victory. there are lots of similarities – both felt to be too serious, too out of touch with the public, with the long shadow of misconduct by their predecessors still looming in the background.

there’s a groundswell of sentiment that labour (who’ve been the party in power since 1997) have outlasted their usefulness, and with the liberal democrats having a late surge in popularity, we may be looking at a big upset.

we’ve had to declare a truce on political discussion in this household – it is a true test of our marriage that we’ve not yet come to blows over this election. suffice it to say, however, that i’m voting strategically tomorrow, specifically to cancel out my husband’s vote.

whatever will happen in the rest of the country will happen. i’m hoping for the best, but bracing for the worst.

i only hope that the fallout (for the sake of britain and the rest of the world), is not nearly as bad as the george w. bush years.

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i suppose the strangest bit is that i truly never intended to be here this long – because while i like london, i have never loved it. oh, i may have my random days of infatuation (usually coinciding with the rarity of a warm, sunny weekend), when i can hardly believe that i live in a city with so much history, but overall, london is just not that great a fit for me. too bound in tradition, too restrictive, too far from anything resembling nature, too crowded. as much as i’ve gotten used to it, i still can’t believe that in a city of 8 million people, the shops all close at 6pm, the tube closes at 12:30, and you can’t buy a bottle of shampoo over 250 ml (8oz).

but i have gotten used to it. it’s the norm, now, for me to use anglicised spellings, metric measurements, and telephone numbers that can have anywhere from 9-11 digits. i’ve stopped puzzling over these things (which still, to a large extent, baffle me) and simply internalised them. this is home, the not-so-new normal.

and it has become immensely easier over the years to be an american, here in blighty. my first flat had no internet (something which i promptly rectified), no cable, and a fridge the size you’d use to store beer in a frathouse living room. everything was small, different, and confusing. it was alien, and alienating – i found myself clinging to “friends” reruns and hiding in my room a lot.

but it was also the kind of cultural immersion of the kind you’d be hard pressed to experience nowadays. things, as they say, have changed. these days there are actual coffeemakers you can purchase in the shop (instead of making do with a one-cup caffetiere/french press). there are more crappy american television shows than you can shake a stick at. there are actual lactose-free products in the dairy aisle (seven years ago, the phrase “lactose intolerant” was completetly unheard of, and trying to explain that you couldn’t eat dairy in a country which reveres milk and cheese was like trying to explain monogamy to tiger woods.) there is skype and there are free long-distance minutes handed out like candy by the mobile companies. there is (loathe as i am to admit it) facebook – allowing me to reconnect with people i thought i’d lost, and helping us to stay interwoven in each other’s lives. there is (holy of holies!) live-streaming baseball, and international amazon.com shipping. being an expat today is completely different – the boundaries between europe and america are becoming more blurred every day.

don’t get me wrong: there is still lots of stuff i miss. american-sized jeans, flavoured coffees, good antiperspirants, and bras are all things i still stock up on when i am back in the states visiting. (the bra thing? don’t ask. i have never found a good-fitting bra here, ever.)

but more importantly, there are things which cannot be imported. spending time with my failing grandfather. being present for the births of my nephew and niece. hot summers by the ocean, going for hikes in the mountains, the freedom of driving speeding down a wide, empty highway. so many of the loves that make my heart sing are so far away.

and to complicate matters, there are freedoms i enjoy here that i would never want to go back to living without. universal healthcare, ample holiday allowances, ease of travel, good beer, eu privileges and protections. these are the fully british rights that i have incorporated as part of my worldview, that have shaped my priorities and politics, for future and forevermore.

i have lived in this strange place of limbo for seven years now – one foot in each world, fully a part of neither, being at “home” in a place i still don’t understand and don’t love, being away from “home” where my family lives but i no longer fit in.

yes, it has gotten easier, thanks largely to technology and the creep of globalisation. (evil globalisation – the boon to the expat. who knew?) but even after seven years, it’s still not easy. i don’t imagine it ever will be – expatica complicates and changes your life in a way that no one can predict. it remains difficult for my family, (and often myself) to understand why i electively live so far away from some of the things that matter most to me in the world. it’s a compulsion that has taken me down a path that i couldn’t reverse if i tried. or wanted to.

like me, this post is a bit of a mish-mash that doesn’t know where it’s going. all i know is that being an expat has long since gone from being a choice about *where* i live, to a choice about *how* i live. from a piece of nomenclature, to a fundamental piece of my identity. the world will change, and my place of residence will change, but that bit of me that has irrevocably changed, will never change.

as long as seven years may seem when i reflect back, looking forward, i know it is only just the beginning.

stranded – sambassadeur
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huh.

i flip it over.

ah right. it’s time for the metropolitan police’s annual spy on your neighbour campaign! not that you’d know immediately from reading it that it’s from the met – what’s with the almost invisible logo?

as i may have mentioned, i live in a heavily muslim community. coinkydink that these are being distributed here?

good thing then, that i live directly next to this.

yup. that’s dozens of bottles of propane, and big sacks of fertiliser. oh, and they flytip too. perhaps i should call? i’ll “let the specialist officers decide” if the fact that it’s next to a hardware store is important. after all, “we don’t believe any call is a waste of time”, and don’t let that 13% terrorism conviction rate fool you: terrorists live amongst us.

(eta: i’d like to point out that i spent some serious time googling to find any evidence on whether this kind of scaremongering has lead to substantive police leads or arrests. i could find none. i suspect because there is none.)

it’s the kind of rant borne of two cruddy, miserable days. it all started yesterday morning when the tube was suspended – i had to walk to the rail station with blistered feet in heels, and when i arrived, i was greeted with the sight of a massive hoarde of people bunching up and spilling out of the station.

this is one of the things i hate about brits: the tendency when everything goes tits up, to just wait like a herd of lowing, passive cattle, waiting for someone to tell them what to do. (told you i was going to get nasty.)

and the fact that i hate that characteristic just irritates me even further when a service like the tube (a very expensive and ill-run public service) seems to go haywire far too often. and people just put up with it.

so i was in a crummy mood. they weren’t letting people into the rail station (even though the rail *was* running, unlike the tube), and they were letting a bunch of people out a side exit, and i saw a few people slip into the station through the side exit. hell, i had a rail pass (and therefore didn’t need to validate my ticket at the gates) so i tried to do the same.

only to get violently shoved by the rail employee. yes, i was physically assaulted by a guy in a fluorescent vest on a fucking power trip who shouted, “what’s wrong with you?! you’re jumping the queue!” (i wonder if he would have dared lay a finger on a male passenger?)

because really, that’s all he cared about. not the fact that i pay through the nose for a tube service that never functions properly. not the fact that i was severely inconvenienced and made late for work. not the fact that the rail service which *was* running, was being curtailed in the name of crowd control rather than expediency.

no, no. the fact that i jumped the fucking queue gave him the right to shove me with his shoulder like a linebacker and scream in my face.

(my formal complaint of being physically assaulted, is now being dealt with – had i not been so shocked, i might have had the presence of mind to call the cops at the time.)

so i got home, and i was annoyed all evening. then today, i walked out the door to see this:

this is the shit from the neighbours. they don’t seem to understand that the front of my house is not a rubbish dump, so they regularly engage in what’s called “flytipping” here – illegal dumping of garbage, refuse, waste, etc. they dump their household rubbish bags in front of my house. they dump their old furniture in front of my house. they dump computer monitors and old ironing boards in front of my house.

this morning, i was treated to several piles of accountancy textbooks they’d apparently decided they no longer wanted. so i shoved them back in front of their driveway, and went off to work.

i had another crap day at work dealing with other people’s incompetence. (gah – can’t *anyone* do their jobs properly??!) and then came home to the pile of books… moved *back in front of my house*, papers flying up and down the street. i stormed off to the hardware store on the corner (who abut the alleyway where the entrance to these people’s flat is) and asked them if they knew who was dumping the shit. turns out, they don’t have anything to do with the people living in the flat, but have just been calling the council to come clear away the rubbish every time. same as i’ve been doing.

so this is what happens: we all know who dumps the rubbish. the council comes and cleans it up. then they just dump more rubbish again. and my tax money pays for it. argh!!!!! it’s beyond infuriating.

and finally, to cap it all off, the postman decided in his/her infinite wisdom, to leave my amazon parcel outside my front door – probably because they were too lazy to make out the collection card and drag the parcel back to the depot. when i found it, the two books which i was soo looking forward to, which were supposed to be inside were long gone.

this is what happens, though, when you’re an expat – a bad few days turns into a bout of effing and blinding about what a shithole of a country you live in, how you can’t believe you live in such a back-asswards place that’s stuck in the victorian era, how you can’t wait to get out because everyone and everything is supremely incompetent. how the most mundane things (transport, litter, post) can’t even get done properly, the natives are cattle, and it’s all gone to hell in a handbasket, god save us when the olympics arrive!

the little (and not so little) annoyances pile up until they become a mountain of self-pity that you can’t seem to dig yourself out from under. the difficulties of daily life become magnified until you attribute them to an entire country and people who can’t possibly do anything right, and it would all be different *if only you lived somewhere else*.

and i do want to live somewhere else. i am keening to live somewhere else. this smae thing happened with new york, and it happened with boston – the familiarity really does breed contempt. but when it’s another country and culture, it’s just so much easier to say the brits suck, than to acknowledge that urban living can be crummy sometimes. the city closeness starts to press in around you until you feel you can’t breathe, but you can’t yet escape, so let’s blame everything on the british. you can’t appreciate any of the beauty of the city (look! historic buildings and sushi restaurants side-by-side! the river and the theatre and the lights and the multi-culti populace and the palace!) because you’re so busy staring downcast into the dirty gutters and breathing the bus fumes. i’m sure vancouver doesn’t have any dirty gutters and bus fumes, and it certainly doesn’t have any sucky brits.

this will pass. i know it will. but right now i’m looking down at the gutters. the city is squeezing the life out of me, i have no books, and there’s rubbish outside my front door.

bloody britain.

over here in the u.k., titles are *mandatory* for practically everything. every form you fill out, every account you open, every online purchase you make, you are required to choose a title.

stop! until you choose a title, you may not pass go! you may not buy that set of plastic mixing bowls for £9.99 until you answer the very important title question!

and while most of the time, it’s the standard mr./mrs./ms./miss choice, being that we live in the u.k., often the choices will include the more exotic honourifics lord/lady/sir/dame etc. etc. etc.

i’ve always been against titles on principle – there are very few instances where my gender and/or marital status are required knowledge for a retail exchange or provision of services to be carried out smoothly and successfully. it’s really wholly unnecessary in 99% of all instances. but in such places where it was required, i have always, always used ‘ms.’ as a title – partly as a nod to second wave feminism, but mostly because it’s none of their damn business whether or not i’m married and i like being cryptic.

over here though? even though i’ve always selected ‘ms.’ every bloody time they force me to use a title? they still put ‘miss’. without fail, on every item where jonno’s and my own differing surnames are included, i am ‘miss’. but even on my own bank account, my paycheque, my junk mail… all ‘miss’, every last one of them. for some reason, ‘ms.’ in the u.k. is not widely used… or, it would seem, acknowledged.

frankly, it pisses me off to no end. the insistence on a title where none is needed (does it *really* make any difference to my veg box order if i am baroness jen, or professor jen, or mrs. jen?) is idiotic enough, but in a country where arbitrary class designations are still so rife (as if by being born into a “noble” family, lord poshbottom of earlchestertonshire is somehow better than anyone else), and where the outmoded queen still sits on her throne pretending to be important in the world, i can kind of understand it.

but to force me to use a title and then not even honour my elected honourific? well that’s just galling. i may not think that titles are important, but to blatantly disregard what i choose to call myself is downright rude.

so lately i’ve been rebelling in my own childish, but amusing way – selecting titles at random. my grocery account is under ‘captain’ jen, my cable bill arrives for ‘mr.’ jen, and so on, and so forth. if they’re going to force me to play their little stupid, bullshit, classist game, then play it i will. it’s petty and small, i know, and entertains no one but myself.

but i can’t wait to use ‘marchioness’. or hell, maybe i’ll just start making some up.

that’s right, my nhs. the system i have, in the past 6 years, come to regard as quite precious to me.

in case anyone stateside is looking for some truth, here it is:

in this country, we view basic healthcare is a *fundamental human right*.  that means it is free at point of service to everyone, regardless of age, ethnicity, gender, weight, sexuality, pre-existing condition, income level, employment status, maternity status, mental status, or disability. that means when i go to the doctor, i never once have to take out my wallet. not once.  that means i don’t have to worry about eligibility periods, or COBRA payments, or copays, or excluded conditions, or health savings funds, or coverage levels, or HMOs, or PPOs, or staying in-network, or annual deductibles, or employer contributions, or payment plans, or contract clauses, or invoices.

i simply go see my doctor, and they treat me.

it’s not perfect – in fact, far from it.  but it’s still a damn sight better than any system currently in place in the u.s.

oh, and if i don’t like it? i can go private.

but don’t take my word for it.  check out the facts for yourself here and here.

i’m tempted to say that if people are stupid enough to buy into the lies and fearmongering, they’ll get the system they deserve…  but they won’t.  because what everyone actually deserves is universal healthcare.

still, in spite of my cynicism, some part of me was kind of hoping it would prove true. sadly, this morning’s news was an all too familiar refrain: august will be wet and cold. as per fucking usual.

so, unsurprisingly, no sun outdoors. luckily, i’ve got my own supply in…

all the ingredients you need for watching television, yes?

oh no, not so fast.  here in britain, if you wish to *use* the television, electricity, and cable you’ve already paid for, you need to pay the government an additional £142.50.  per year.

see, the uk has this public commodity called the bbc.  it’s essentially the same thing as pbs back in the states – publicly subsidised media which is supposed to provide independent, impartial and educational media to the masses.  now, leaving aside the matter of bias (because it’s simply not possible for media to be entirely free of bias, and the bbc is no exception), the bbc is funded by this “television license”, which is collected annually from every household which owns a functioning television.  this pays for 8 national television channels, 10 radio stations, the online website, and some regional/local media. (other services are paid for through other funding streams).

lots of people argue that they don’t use any of the bbc services, therefore should not have to pay the tv licensing fee.  personally, i have no problem with paying for public services i don’t use – i do it all the time, in fact.  i pay for roadworks when i don’t drive, education when i have no kids, libraries which i don’t visit, etc.  i believe these things serve the greater public good, and i’m happy to have money withheld from my paycheque to contribute.

what i have a problem with, is the notion that this television licensing fee is not a flat tax.  because while it may have begun in 1946, days when few people owned a television, and the bbc was *the* only broadcaster, (and therefore only taxed those people who actually used the service is supported), in 2009, the idea of television as a luxury which is taxed only for the 98% of families who own one, is just dumb. even sillier, it’s not the *television itself*, or even the actual service (e.g. transmission), but the *reception* of the service, which is taxed.

i don’t have to buy an annual water license for receiving my water, or electrical license for allowing current into my home.  yet every year, i have to pay for allowing television airwaves into my living room.

furthermore, the method of collection is so blatantly inefficient as to be laughable.  the idea that you have to renew your license each year, means that there is an amazing breadth of scope for omission/evasion.  if they don’t have you on their database as having a valid license, they first send you a standard warning letter.  more than 20 million warning letters are issued each year.  if that fails to produce the desired response, the tv licensing people come personally knocking at your door, and try to get you to allow them into your home.  they have “tv detector vans”, which can tell if you have a television operating in your household.   they make around 3.5 million personal visits each year.  they threaten prosecution, tell you that you’ll be “cautioned and interviewed”, and could be subject to £1000 fine.

according to their 2009 report, the bbc spends they spent 4% of all revenue from the television tax on collection and enforcement.  £181 million each year is lost through evasion, about 5% are evaders.  the cost of collection is £122 million, of which, £73.4 million is spent on direct collection and enforcement.  of the 3.5 million visits, 603,000 end up as “sales” (i.e. people purchasing a license), which roughly adds up to income of £84.4 million pounds.  £20 million was garnered in prosecution fines.

in other words: they spend £73.4 million a year to collect £84.4 million pounds, plus an additional £20 million from people they prosecute (minus prosecution costs, natch, which they’ve neglected to specify in their report), and continue to lose £181 million per year.

doesn’t sound terribly efficient to me.

if all this rigamarole sounds antiquated, bizarre and farcical, it’s because it is.  for fuck’s sake.  stop the intimidating and inefficient harassment campaign.  collect the television tax like every other tax applying to household utilities – either at the point of service (add an additional sales tax to cable, satellite and internet services), or as paycheque withholding (like we pay for almost all other publicly subsidised infrastructure and services).  easy peasy – no opportunity for evasion, no need for enforcement, no adversarial intimidation.

good god, even traffic enforcement is more advanced than the tv licensing regulation!  why are they still stuck in an era where people require little pieces of paper that prove they’re entitled to operate a television?  we no longer live in 1946.  the bbc need to stop pretending that we do.

an incredible sunny warm summer evening.  husband on the barbeque.  wimbledon on the television. and this view at the end of the couch.

you’d be too lazy to blog too.

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21 years living in boston. number of subway strikes? zero

2 years living in montreal. number of subway strikes? zero.

6 years living in london. number of tube strikes? not counting the one that began today and runs to thursday? i seriously can’t even remember, what with the constant strike threats and partial strikes and strike balloting and full-scale strikes and narrowly averted strikes… think i’m exaggerating?  well let’s just see…

since march 2003:

what a fucking joke.

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i abruptly surface from the depths of a dream to hear someone screaming this in the street just below our bedroom window. it’s 3 am.

shaking jonno awake – “did you hear that??!”

“i’m going to shoot you!”

jonno rolls over, “wha??”, and then attempts to go back to sleep.

adrenaline pumping, i get up and call 999 in the dark, relay the details whilst peeping out the window to try to see what’s going on, then creep back into the bedroom.  jonno is still lying there.

“c’mon, let’s move away from the window.”  “why?”  “because if someone’s going to start shooting, i’d prefer to be as far away from the bullet trajectory as possible!”  he reluctantly gets up and pads to the back of the house with me.  the cat crawls under the bed.

people still shouting outside.  surely someone else has called the police as well?  this is a residential street.  the shouting moves up the street away from our house.  i crawl back to the window looking for the police.  a minute or two later, they arrive, bringing an ambulance as well.  they stop in front of our house.  the phone rings.  it’s the police, wanting to know which direction the guys went in.  i indicate the general direction and they head off.

we climb back into bed, and lie there for a bit, heart still racing.  i say, “that’s the thing about living in a city – everyone always thinks someone else must’ve called the police.”

j says, ” well if it made you feel better, it’s good that you did.”

“*what*!??! what do you mean, ‘if it made me feel better’??!  what would you have done?”

“i wouldn’t have called the police.  people who announce they’re going to shoot someone, never actually shoot someone.”

“oh really?  is this in your vast experience of witnessing shootings?!”

“i’m just saying that people who bluster about it never do it.”

“you know, i’ve lived in major cities since i was 17, sometimes in rather dodgy areas.  i’m as jaded as the next urbanite, and hardly someone who overreacts to general city craziness.  but when someone’s shouting that they’re going to shoot someone, i’m not going to be the one to make that judgement call about whether or not they really mean it.  i’d rather call the police and say, ’someone is threatening to shoot someone outside my front door,’ than call and say, ’someone just shot someone outside my front door.’ ”

so, dear reader: what would you have done?  ignored it on the assumption that it was just bravado? or called the police?

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I have made it a key Manifesto pledge that I will use GLA funding to substantially increase financial support to the charity sector working with the victims.   There is currently only one Rape Crisis Centre in London – located in Zone 5.  I will provide the funding for four new Rape Crisis Centres in London, paid for by reducing spending on the Mayor’s personal press officer budget.

today he reneged on that pledge.

in related news, the cab driver who was convicted of a dozen serial rapes over 18 months, (and suspected of attacking up to 85 people back as far as 2002), was sentenced to at least 8 years today.  he went unapprehended for so long in part because the sex crimes unit of the metropolitan police was understaffed and in disarray.

yet boris outlined a new domestic violence strategy in which he says:

For any plan to work we must have the police, local authorities, community organisations, health sector and criminal justice system all working together across borough boundaries. We also need to get tougher. Tougher on the perpetrators of violence, who currently enjoy a ridiculous level of immunity, and tougher on the attitudes that condone violence against women.

no kidding boris.  tell me when you’re willing to get serious about it, instead of just paying lipservice. actions speak louder than words.

women in london deserve better.

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in many ways, i think i learned more about myself by getting on that plane than probably anything else i’ve ever done in my life.  charging off into a completely unknown future.  it felt like both a running away, and a running towards – what? at the time i couldn’t have said.

i know now, that that indescribable, ineffable *something*, was a self i sensed existed somewhere within, but couldn’t quite visualise, and it took throwing myself up against some hard things to begin to determine her outline.  yet while the emergence of this new self coincided with landing in new city, it wasn’t the scenery that changed so much as the internal landscape.  although i arrived lugging two heavy suitcases full of stuff, i left a whole lot of baggage behind.

“wherever you go, there you are.”  any expat or traveller will tell you how true that is.  there is something about the act of uprooting that challenges you beyond the superficial acclimatisation.  it forces you to take stock of yourself in a way few other experiences can.  it tests your ability to be independent, your ability to operate outside your comfort zone, your ability to make and maintain relationships, your ability to learn and internalise language and customs, your ability to deal with loneliness and obstacles, your ability to navigate new environments.  in short, it gets to the core of everything you know about your place in the world, and turns it upside down.  then gives it a good shake, like a snowglobe, just for fun.

the trick is not in learning to right yourself – the trick is in learning to live upside down.  and be happy in it.

because getting off the plane was just the beginning.  getting off the plane and stepping into the unknown, was actually the easiest part.

it’s taken me 6 years to learn all that, in lessons big and small.  so as i contemplate uprooting in the near future, for canada (or perhaps other parts as yet unknown), i look back and wonder: can i really do it all again?

some days it is louder than others, to be sure -  but that piece of my brain that lights up, and the pit in my stomach that leaps up into my chest like it’s cresting a rollercoaster, ring out with a resounding and definitive answer:

hellz yeah.

the prize fighter inferno – the going price for home

Download audio file (01TheGoingPriceforHome.mp3)

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they do sell bisquick here though, thank goodness, so we had fluffy american shortstacks with maple syrup and butter.

the bottle of maple syrup we purchased says, “delicately smooth taste of butterscotch and creme caramel.” um, no. butterscotch tastes like butterscotch. caramel tastes like caramel. and maple tastes like maple.

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in the uk, you do not call the cops for this.  noise is a council problem.  this is what we pay our council tax for.  so at about 12:30, we ring the emergency noise line, and they say they’ll send someone out.  even more shockingly, no one in the flats immediately adjacent or above/below this craziness has bothered to complain.

a little green wandsworth car comes out.  and then leaves.

jonno rings back the noise line.  apparently they cannot ask the people to turn it down because there were people “loitering”, and they deemed it unsafe.

loitering? at a party? well i never!!

seriously.  they tell us they can file a report.  that’s it.

we try to go back to bed.  j has to go into work in the morning.  it’s 1:30.

and finally, i spring up, put on slippers and go downstairs.  there’s a 20-ish guy outside the flat with a beer, the door open, insanely loud music blasting out.

he seems a bit unsettled by the approach of a woman half-asleep in pyjamas.  i ask him what time it is.  he (in all seriousness) looks at his watch and tells me it’s 1:30.  he begins to look sheepish.

i say, “which means that that noise is beyond ridiculous, and completely unacceptable.  i live here too, and it’s incredibly rude to be this loud at this hour of the morning.”

he starts apologising, says he’ll take care of it, and immediately begins to start yelling at the people inside to turn the music down.

i shuffle back upstairs.  the noise drops off immediately.

climb back in bed and fall asleep.

the damnwells – bastard of midnight
Download audio file (Bastard%20of%20Midnight.mp3)

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