In the UK there’s a better than even chance most folk live in a house not attached to another on one or both sides. Sure, they still have neighbours but not everyone owns a dwelling that sits shoulder to shoulder with the next one. In Elche, the city I call home, the residents of my building and the two adjoining it are detached too, from reality most of ‘em. I'll get to that presently though.
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| Balsa wood - perfect for models, less so for houses |
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of Spain, where, unless you’re mega wealthy with a massive pile out in the campo, apartment buildings are the order of the day. Only the floor of a typical Spanish building is constructed with any substance, the walls get knocked up in twenty minutes from some balsa wood, a dob of putty and a coat of paint. Granted they’re rarely as ramshackle as a similar edifice in say, Cairo, where if somebody farts the whole thing topples sideways, which is very much a good thing, but on the downside the feeble construction methods here never include any kind of sound proofing.
Unsurprisingly, apartments buildings do what it says on the tin, that being a building with apartments, which kind of brings me to the crux of these words, each apartment has an occupant. My block on a busy city centre street only has one flat on each floor which is great, less nice is the fact it’s squidged between other buildings to each side of us and the party walls appear to have been thrown up without any balsa wood, or the putty come to think of it. My girlfriend and I, with whom I co-habit, rarely get drunk, row, play music way too loud or have all night parties, the same can’t be said of my neighbours though who frequently do. Most times all four occur together.
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| Everybody needs good neighbours |
To our left, the bloke next door is an unemployed television addict, just for a laugh I made a note one day of how long his telly was on. I did actually go out for a couple or three hours in the afternoon and can only assume it was still talking to itself, but his Liza Minnelli was in use from ten to seven in the morning until well gone one the following day. Imagine eighteen solid hours of all the bollocks you normally get on UK TV. Directly above we have a middle aged couple and their adult daughter, who, like quite a few grown up Spanish kids, shows no sign of leaving the family home to get her own place. Judging by the frequent arguments, this seems to rankle with her parents. Once a week, as regularly as clockwork, father comes home drunk, you can always tell because he lurches up the communal stairs singing. Badly. His good mood and happy demeanour last about fifteen minutes on average before the neurotic daughter, and occasionally his wife, kick off a huge argy. War is eventually followed by Peace. They also have a dog who I don’t think has ever been outside, certainly for the past three years at least. I think Rover, the agoraphobic mongrel, must be mute because I’ve never heard him bark, not once. In the absence of fresh air and a chance to exercise in the park, what he does is tear arse up and down their hall for ages on end. I wish they’d cut the little shih-tzu's toe nails because it sounds like the Grand National up there.
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| Bob only works nights |
Then there's the bloke who thinks nothing of getting his hammer or Black & Decker out whenever the urge to put up a shelf, torture his cat or repair his motorcycle on the lounge floor becomes irresistable. That's the problem with urges, they kind of take over and not even someone with the willpower of Uri Geller can resist them. In the case of Bob the (selfish) Builder that may well be as late as eleven at night. Good neighbours becoming good friends? probably not likely anytime soon. As I suggested at the top of this entry, the people living near me populate their own little worlds where no-one else exists. This then, in their closed minds, makes it perfectly acceptable to behave like inconsiderate tossers.
