Our flat in London was quiet.
We were joint owners of the twenty units.
We had our own board of directors and drew up our own terms and conditions.
Silence was a requirement.
Threat of expulsion was held over our heads when my mother lived there.
She was a noisy woman! At least her television and occasional visiting grandsons were.
When one of the residents moved on his family sold the top floor flat.
The owner in the flat below, who could hear the plugging in of the kettle and the toast popping from the toaster in the kitchen just above his head, worried his new neighbour would be noisy.
She was Italian and wore high heels!
That’s the level of quiet everyone aspired to.
We nick named the block, Highcliffe Monastery.
It suited us.
Our first level apartment here in Garland is generally quiet.
We don’t hear loud music, or cars peeling out of the lot, or parties happening around tailgates or fights ricocheting across the courtyard.
What we do hear are air conditioning units.
They reside on the ground floor just outside our bedroom windows. It is winter, we had snow last week for goodness sake, and I hear just one, going on and cutting off,
All. Night. Long,
“Open your window,” I want to shout to the person upstairs.
I wonder what the summer will bring?
Then a herd of elephants moved in upstairs. The apartment floors are carpeted but their footfalls resound as if on tile or wood.
Back and forth all day and night,
Drawers opening, balls bouncing,
Doors slamming, toilets flushing,
Water running, feet stamping, thud, thud, thud, thud, thud.
Mysteriously it goes quiet for a day, have they all expired, or gone away?
Then, at 2 in the morning they return and the pilgrimage around every square inch of the apartment resumes.
Daughts, who lives with us from time to time, hears them at 4a.m. when she gets up for work, the tromping is unceasing.
We complain and Daughts grows frustrated and murderous when there’s no result,
“What are they doing? I nearly went up this morning to find out.”
“You don’t want to get in a fight, ” I caution.
“Bang on the ceiling!”
We do!
After a few times, very late at night, it worked.
We have peace at last.
For now.
Well hello there! My name is Vivienne McNeny.
I am an empty nester exploring life as a Boomer…you could say I'm happily Boomering along!
As a homeschooling Mum I have finally quit the job of role model and mentor to my four children. I do what I want to do, eat when I feel like it, enjoy life with my blue eyed cowboy and clean my house once a month or so whether it needs it or not!
In true English form I write about the emergence of my true identity now that I can no longer hide behind my children as their Mum.
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