"That's why I want my book to sell..."

I live in a ground floor flat in Ealing Common between two of the loudest households in Britain and below a young couple whose chief preoccupation appears to be dropping heavy objects on the floor.

Cheryl and I are sitting in our living room sipping wine and straining to hear our television above the cacophony surrounding us. DVDs seem to be mixed with the dialogue approximately three times quieter than the music and sound effects, and as the plot unfolds on The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin and I edge the volume slowly upwards to a comfortable level, suddenly Reggie imagines his mother-in-law as a hippopotamus and the bassoon goes ‘wah-wah’ and the audience erupts in deafening laughter, the room shakes and the baby upstairs wakes up and screams. Oh, did I mention the baby upstairs? He’s one and he likes to run around and bang on windows. And, of course, he has been blessed with the dropping-heavy-objects-on-the-floor gene.

The man to our north owns ten records. Not ten different albums, you understand, but ten songs. And he is immensely proud of them. So much so that even on a November evening when it gets dark at four and dips below freezing shortly afterwards, he has his back doors open, singing along in broken English to his tunes. This way we can hear it throbbing through the wall and through our poorly insulated patio doors.

He always opens with The Animals’ 'House of the Rising Sun’. This is also the ring tone on his phone. So sometimes we have it playing twice simultaneously, at different stages of the song. Next along is ‘(Everything I Do) I Do It For You,’ a song played so often that terrible summer of its sixteen week stay at number one that everyone in the country except for him still reaches for the closest sharp object and begins to stab themselves absentmindedly whenever they hear Bryan Adams’ ghastly crooning.

Following these two, always in the same order, is ‘Civil War,’ ‘Comfortably Numb,’ and a return for Adams with ‘Summer of ’69.’ You can probably guess one or two of the remainder. Thanks to the way I consume these songs, I know every thunk, rattle and scratch of the bass lines, but little of the high guitar notes. His kid uses our fence for football practise and shouts in Arabic. His wife is fat and English. His daughter is a loud, surly teenager and appears to be Australian. It is deeply confusing.

And to our south lies Party Central. We are not sure whether it is inhabited by ten people or one very popular couple. Either way, it is rammed every night with braying, shrieking youths. They do not play music or watch television, merely scream and cheer for hours. I have never heard anyone have so much fun, although the alarmingly vast quantities of dope they smoke may go some way towards explaining it.

Naturally I am far too cowardly to confront these people directly. Occasionally, usually towards the end of the wine, I may suddenly leap out of the chair and slam my fist against one or both of the walls, which appears to go unheard or just unheeded.

Tonight, Cheryl watches me sink back onto the sofa, clutching my throbbing hand and weeping gently. “I don’t think that achieves anything, Christopher.”

“I know,” I moan, frowning like a five-year-old.

The episode finishes and we sit in silence for a few depressing minutes, listening to our neighbours having conscience-free revelry.

“This is why I want my book to sell,” I tell Cheryl. “I don’t want to be famous. I don’t want to be excessively rich. I just want a detached house in the country where we can’t hear anyone else and no one can hear us. Everyone should be entitled to that. Why do they make us all live on top of one another?”

“Some people like living in a community,” Cheryl suggests.

I shudder. “I don’t ask for much. I don’t want celebrity friends, I don’t want to be a media whore, renewing our vows in Hello for a few grand.”

Cheryl tilts her head as if she thinks this might be worth considering. “No celebrity friends? What about Pete Doherty?”

She knows my weaknesses. “OK, maybe just Peter. My feelings towards him are conflicting, though. I want to help him, but I also want to do drugs with him.”

“Can I be friends with the Mighty Boosh?” Cheryl asks.

“Both of them?”

“Yes,” she says, putting her head on my chest.

“OK,” I concede. Party Central screams, the baby drops a piano and ‘House of the Rising Sun’ begins again. “I’d like a workspace at the bottom of the garden.”

“Away from the house?” Cheryl asks. I nod and she smiles. “That would be great.”



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