Chuck outs

03/24/2015

Way back when I lived in a block of flats in Bondi.

One tenant was the curse of the block – parties all night, loud music and loud rooting.

It didn’t bother me too much because I was brought up in a pub.

But it did bother my neighbours, greatly.

Months of assiduous complaining to the body corporate by the accursed brought only temporary relief.

The antagonist truly thought that each complaint was ephemeral; specific to the incident at hand.

He had not the capacity to extrapolate to the root cause, namely a general dislike of not being able to sleep.

I think this was because he slept during the day and couldn’t see why they wouldn’t as well.

One day, over a beer and a smoke on the back verandah I tried to explain this to him.

I like to think that it was I who precipitated his next action; he made a formal written complaint to the council about his own noisy emissions.

You couldn’t argue that he didn’t have a sense of humour.

But I was the only other person in the block that was laughing.