I jump off the bus and turn the corner and realise Her Upstairs is stomping down the street in front of me with a proper stride on, hands flailing at her side as though she’s ON A MISSION. And she keeps turning and gawking at me over her shoulder, full on growling at me as if I’m some kind of strange man following her down the road. And she gets to our front door, and she unlocks it, and she’s still pure drawing daggers at me as I approach, and next thing she’s got it open and she’s in and she slams the close door just before I get there, leaving me to stand rummaging for my keys. Nice. I get in just in time to hear her last footfall on the landing and her front door slam shut.
Weird.
And I’ve forgotten all about it a few hours later, and I’m going about my business and thinking I really should be getting ready for bed when this almighty noise starts up. And it’s terrifying, and it’s deafening, and it’s definitely coming from directly above, and I’m thinking she has either bought herself a Flabelos machine (those shaky plate thingies) or she’s got herself the biggest bit of kit Ann Summers had in stock pre-Valentines day. And by now my ceiling’s shaking so hard I’m convinced it’s going to cave in and land on me. I can’t help but wonder why the hell she’s waited till after 1am to use whatever the hell it is when she must know folk in the building are trying to sleep?!
I head to bed with a book and plug my earphones in, but the whole time I’m reading wee shadows keep dancing across the pages of my book because my bedside lamp is still shuddering and juddering away, and every now and then wee streams of plaster or stoor fall down from round the big light above. And as it gets close to 3am and my eyes are like dugs baws, it finally starts to slow down, and I take out an earbud to discover that the sound like a space shuttle braking in reverse is probably the three hour cycle finishing on the world’s oldest and loudest and most under used tumble dryer (which might explain why I’ve never heard it before). And as silence finally falls, and I think Thank Fk For That and click the light out, I lay there in the dark trying to fall over wondering again what the hell the problem was when she was stoating down the road with her face tripping her, and as I try to drift off to sleep I can’t think for the life of me why I was getting pelters or what I’d done to deserve The Wrath of the Hoosewife from Above.
But I don’t get too much time to ponder in silence, because at 3:14am, the whole world starts to wobble violently.
She’s shoved on a second bloody load.
SAKE, WUMMIN.