Neigh-bours! Everybody needs good neighbours...

I was reading Watski's blog yesterday, and he was going on about his noisy neighbours. Luckily enough for him, it appears that little or no effort has been required to get the offending bastards to shut up. I have to say though, that neighbours doing what you want them to do, ie. shut up, is extremely rare. Our current neighbours (or that quiet lot upstairs, as we like to refer to them) are the exception to the rule. They hardly make any noise, keep themselves to themselves, and they either don't have a television, read the subtitles rather than have the sound on, or wear headphones all the time as we never hear any superfluous noise emanating from within their abode. Basically, they fucking rock. They are the perfect neighbours from heaven, and they couldn't stand in greater contrast to the neighbour that went before them.

I have never had a worse neighbour, or a more upsetting episode with any one person, as what we experienced with (pardon my Swahili) THAT FUCKING TWAT who lived above us for our first year here. I really should start at the beginning.

The first day we moved in we were alerted to his ridiculous double standards. It must have been about half eleven at night, and we were trying to relax after moving loads of our stuff in. So we just pissed around knocking on the walls for a laugh. It wasn't even vaguely noisy, and you know, we're conscientious neighbours so we try not to make any noise that's going to piss someone else off, yet this berk banged on the ceiling (his floor) for us to be quiet. So we were quiet. Best not to start off on the wrong foot we thought, with the best intentions. But things gradually took a turn for the worse. Within a week or so we were starting to get a handle on this guys behaviour patterns - he was that noisy. He would get up earlyish, about 9am, and proceed to get his decks out, whack on some annoying hip-hop shite at a bloody ridiculous volume for 9 in the morning, and just to add to the effect he would open all of his windows. It didn't help that his speakers were directly above our bedroom either. So I went outside into our patio and yelled up to try and get his attention, which was difficult considering the volume. This failed miserably, so I lobbed a small pebble at his window. This worked. The music went off, and he came to the window. A more molly-coddled example a of wet-lipped toffee-nosed trust-funded mummys-boy I've never seen. Standard issue floppy hair, b-boy outfit and baseball cap to boot. He said hello. I looked pissed off and tired. He said his name was Jody (snigger snigger), he was sorry and that he'd keep the music down. I said cheers and stomped off. Later in his day, he would have a sleep, from say 11am to 5pm, then he'd get up, stomp about slamming doors (one of the things me and Mrs Lagomorph hate more than anything else, even dropping toast butter side down), then he'd go out and, I assume, get wankered. Then he'd come back from the pub at about 11.15pm with an annoying posh twat mate in tow, and proceed to make far too much noise for that time of night. He also had a tendency (as is generally the case when steadily drinking more and more) to get louder as the night went on. Some nights the noise would be going on until 6 or 7am. When I have to get up. Have you seen those old Bugs Bunny cartoons where Yosemite Sam gets increasingly frustrated by Bugs and starts to go all red in the face and gets steam coming out of his ears? Well that was me. Except with added tiredness, bags under the eyes and I can guarantee, way more pissed off.

On numerous occasions, too many to mention, I had to get out of bed, get dressed, and go upstairs to confront the fucker. Banging on the ceiling and shouting at him to shut up just seemed to get him angrier. Why should he be angry at us? He's the one making the fucking noise?? I would go upstairs, tired as all hell, probably looking rough as guts, and try to have a discussion with this pissed up toff. One time he tried to get on my good side by offering me weed, and also name-dropping. "Ever heard of 10cc?" he asked. "Yeah. And?" I replied dryly. "Well, my dad was the lead singer." I've never been less impressed. If he'd said his dad was Jimmy Page or something then maybe I'd have been interested, but the creator of 'I'm Not In Love'? That don't impress me much, as a crap American country twat once warbled. This is the bloke. Apparently he knew Paul McCartney once. Bothered. To be honest this knowledge just endeared me to him even less. Did he really think I was going to go "Wow! Brilliant! All is forgiven, oh, and can I be your best mate?"?

So anyway, things just escalated. He went through periods of being quiet. This was only due to the landlord scaring the shit out of him by threatening to tell his dad what was going on (you have to laugh don't you?), and I really must say thankyou to our landlord (not that he's reading this) for his help and support throughout all of this. I can honestly say that if he hadn't been on our side - and it wasn't just us, it was all the neighbours - then this situation would not have been resolved, and we would, in all probability, not be living there now. Where was I? Yeah, things just got worse. He got louder, more annoying (prime example: singing along to some fucking annoying Tenacious D song at the top of his voice, every day, with his mate on harmonies) and more vindictive. Near the end - and what a dragged out end it was - he was shouting at us through the floor, calling me and Mrs Lagomorph all sorts of stuff, as well as spitting at our windows, throwing food into our patio, and throwing wine glasses down our steps. It was a great time!

The landlord, with everyone's agreement, gave him three months notice of eviction in February this year, so the Twat Upstairs just used this time to vent his anger at the world and everything else in our general direction. What a dull life! Get up, get pissed off, listen to crap music (Ugly Kid Joe?), don't go to work because daddy pays for everything - although, amusingly, he described himself as a freelance photographer. Isn't that what Paris Hilton does? - as he's a big rock star, go to bed, get pissed, go to the pub, come home and get more pissed, shout at the neighbours for being arseholes who don't understand how hard life is, and then collapse in a heap. And then do the same the next day, except just that little bit angrier.

I must say, some of the anti-twat tactics we utilised during this period - although nothing was able to totally shut him up - were very amusing. Christ, we had to keep our spirits up somehow. This dick made me ill! I was off work for a few days with tiredness and stress caused by his thoughtless behaviour. Anyway, here's a list of some of these tactics:

• Ramming the ceiling incessantly with the heavy end of a pool cue.
• Throwing stones at windows.
• Throwing food and various objet d'art through the open windows.
• Leaving Squarepusher on constant repeat at full volume, whilst we're at work/college and he's in bed (Ha!)
• Calling the Police (this works).
• Calling his landline over and over and over again (I have ways and means of getting this information) and not saying anything. If someone kept calling you, you'd get annoyed.
• Hocking massive loogys at his window. Mmmmm.
• Mrs Lagomorph, quite brilliantly, tried to break his window on about three occasions, by lobbing a fucking heavy part of a metal railing at it. Somehow the glass stood firm, but the noise, especially at 3 in the morning, put the right royal shits up him.

All of this was very enjoyable, but in the end, eviction was the only thing that well and truly did the trick. Oh, and threatening to tell his dad. What... a cock, as Daisy would say. I can say with no hesitation whatsoever, that life without his banging, slamming (and my God, how he could slam that front door), stamping, shouting, cursing, breathing... EVERYTHING! ...is much, much better. And I can get a decent nights sleep for a change.

Nb. Jody Stewart is his name. Watch out for him. Make sure you do not live anywhere near him. You've been warned.