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Beach Shorts & Radio Days

This is a crucial moment...

 

Him:  (He waves his hands in the air) I'm in the middle of eating my dinner.  I'll put it through your door after the ... (what was it he said?), it's a crucial moment.

Me:  No (emphatic) NOW.  What can I do to help (me trying to be forgiving/diplomatic)?  Him:  he points upwards and mouthed something at me.  Me:  It cannot continue.

The first conversation with my neighbour of 5 years.

Today started at 2.38 am.  With an intermittent high pitch beep.  I looked out the window, nothing but black and the beep which seemed to move around the garden space so that I couldn't be sure of its source.

Man-made beeps are not nearly so beautiful as birdsong.  The day before I was woken by birdsong at 4.38. Man is behind the times clearly.  Or aggravatingly before.  The birds today remained silent or went elsewhere - the ugliness of the beep drowning out any possibility of joy.

After 12 hours - what took me so long?  I called the council.  They could hear the beep during the call.  Them:  We don't normally hear it over the phone.  Me:  Can you help?  They came around.  The beep mysteriously stopped on their arrival.  Sod's law isn't it.

A little later, after 5pm - beep.  Then more and more and more.  It was back.

What to do?  The council are shut.  Deciding on a plan - that is: to visit each of my neighbours to see if they've heard it and know it's source - I go next door.  There are no door bells.  None.  The wires are all hanging out of the frame in a huge bundle.  But I can hear the beep loudly through the door.   Aha.  I call loudly through the letterbox.  HELLO.  HELLO.  HELLO.  HELL-O.  A light goes on and a door along the corridor opens.  A woman appears:  Yes, Yes, Yes?  The beep is ringing in her ears.  It's a neighbour's beep not hers and she is so tired of the incessant sound. 

She lets me in and I climb the stairs to the freeholder.  He doesn't answer my knocks or my hellos through his letterbox.

I go home.  How would you get hold of a neighbour 1 storey up with no doorbell who won't answer his front door?  I'm elevated too.  I get a pole, write a note, attach it then wave it in front of his window while calling out his name very loudly.  KEVIN.  It worked.

I could see him through the window with his headphones on - he turned around with surprise and gestured through the window at me - a hand to the ear - a moue - then that shrug that people do from their shoulders to their hands hopelessly.  I carried on waving the homemade flag and pointed downstairs.  He knew why I was waving - his headphones gave him away.

Damn beep is still beeping away.  

I'm often surprised and delighted

Telling Stories: Hastings

It's begun...

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The undeniable

Remember the post: 'the imponderable' 21/5/2010 - consisting of merely this...




 

A photograph of some sky blue doors.  Closed off to me.  By me?  Not wishing to contemplate what lay beyond them, paralysed by the outer potentially reflecting the inner. The lack of handles adding to the mystery (or horror) of what they shut in or out.  The only suggested access via what might be a key-hole or worse still, lots of them on their surface.  The green foliage on the outside suggesting that the outside was by far the better place to be.

Is it always to be the case that things are often not what they seem?  And if so, how much do we miss through our avoidance of really looking.  Had I allowed my inate curiousity to look a little bit closer or more accurately, more openly then I would have seen earlier what I now have seen.  It's not that it wasn't that bad, it's more that it was so incredibly good.