Bombed by bass: how the neighbours’ music turned my flat into a hellhole

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/05/noisy-neighbours-drug-taking-my-flat-hellhole

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The night when the trouble with our neighbours started is a bit hazy because I was in the grips of a savage hangover. I was quietly minding my own business, trying to cope with the taste of water and the sound of shrill Saturday night TV, when suddenly everything shook to the beat of next door’s thumping bass reverberating through our living room wall. I turned to my girlfriend, hoping she would tell me it was just a car outside or my own pounding head exploding, but her grim nod confirmed the worst.

After about half an hour of not being able to hear anything else, and after walking round our tiny flat several times, whinging about the noise in each individual room, I stomped next door in my pyjamas and asked them if they wouldn’t mind turning it down. A boy answered the door, while his mates peered out from behind him. He apologised before I could even say anything and turned it down. “That’s the end of that,” my girlfriend said. Being more prone to pessimism and suspicion, I shook my head knowingly: “This is not the end.” And I was right.

Over the next couple of months, our neighbours continued to play their music at all times of the day and night, at top volume, and with the bass was turned up as high as possible – meaning our flat vibrated to the tune of their rudeness and inconsiderateness. After much googling, the only “solution” I could find for coping with intrusive music was to play white noise; but the consensus for heavy bass was, basically, you’re screwed. There’s nothing you can do.

The first couple of times, the neighbours turned the music down at our request. But pretty soon they stopped answering the door. Then they began making as much noise as humanly possible on purpose. Combined with them smoking weed in our corridor and on our shared balcony, this made coming back to the flat an increasingly anxiety-ridden experience.

I don’t use the word anxiety lightly. I have never before described myself as an anxious person, but the threat of this unwelcome noise ate away at my nerves to the point where the sound of my girlfriend putting cutlery away or turning a page in a book set my teeth on edge. In fact, any noise that didn’t directly come from me made my stomach turn in anticipation of our neighbours starting up again. We started to stay with friends – not only to escape the neighbours, but to escape the anxiety that comes with not being able to relax in your own home.

We ended up contacting our landlord at 4am one morning with an email dramatically entitled “end of our tether – living in a literal hellhole” after a sleepless night listening to next door playing Alt J on repeat. We called 101 (the non-emergency police number) and the lady was so nice to me that I cried, but all she could do was log our incident and tell us to contact her if it happened again. I explained to our landlord how they would never find tenants as good as us (until we set fire to our balcony – another story) and that they needed to sort it out immediately. They got the council involved who were extremely helpful, worked very quickly and sent a couple of letters which seemed to do the trick, at least at first.

Not that it mattered, because by that time we left shortly afterwards. We just couldn’t comfortably live in that flat anymore; even if it was going to be noise-free, bumping into the neighbours was a source of dread. Thankfully our new neighbours are lovely, and I’ve started to get used to the idea that one house party across the street does not mean we are going to be subjected to a daily dose of music at top volume. Though when we move again, my first question is still going to be: “What are the neighbours like?”

• This article was commissioned after a suggestion from hvadaltsaa