When enough is enough

[shewhomust]

At five o' clock this morning I called the police to the party whose music - or at least, the percussion part of whose music, that being what travels - I had been hearing all night.

I wish I could have expressed myself with as much elegance and vitriol as the friend - the last permanent resident in his street and normally extremely tolerant of his student neighbours, who had tweeted at 10.30:

To those male Durham students currently singing rugby songs in my street: this is why Oxbridge rejected you, why nobody except the other ---- likes you, and why you will die unloved after a lonely, divorced old age.
(My redaction)

So I wasn't feeling my brightest this morning when I sat down at my computer, and realised that those scuffling noises were not, as I thought at first, pigeons skidding about on the attic roof, but a very disgruntled bird which had somehow managed to get inside and trap itself in the space between my desk and the wall. durham_rambler had to be dragged away from the livestream of the County Council's cabinet meeting to open the Velus window immediately above it...

This is enough excitement for this week - and no, nowhere near ready to set off for Lindisfarne on Friday.

Comments

[sovay]

At five o' clock this morning I called the police to the party whose music - or at least, the percussion part of whose music, that being what travels - I had been hearing all night.

Agh.

Similar occurrences were a regular feature of my time in New Haven, when I lived on a street which contained two fraternities, and I don't miss it.

[shewhomust]

I'm hazy about the atatus of fraternities: does the university have any degree of oversight, or are they (like our many but individual shared rental houses) left to the community to manage?

[sovay]

does the university have any degree of oversight, or are they (like our many but individual shared rental houses) left to the community to manage?

I believe the university has oversight in the sense that it can shut down a fraternity for hazardous or extra-inappropriate behavior, but I don't believe it can control their off-campus activities in the sense of being a nuisance to the neighbors. So I could spend nights listening to parties and find red plastic beer cups all up and down the street in the morning and on at least one occasion watch one of the fraternities march up and down the street singing something bawdy/rapey to the tune of "Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye," but short of calling the cops on them, there wasn't much to do.

[shewhomust]

This does sound very familiar (with the possible difference that drinking is legal at 18 here - I don't know what your rule is these days). Neighbours are reluctant to call out the police, but since that's the only enforcement there is, we are gradually coming round to the idea.

[sovay]

This does sound very familiar (with the possible difference that drinking is legal at 18 here - I don't know what your rule is these days).

These days what's called the national minimum drinking age is 21, which is stupid, not least because it doesn't govern the consumption of alcohol, just the lawful purchase of it. As far as I could tell as a student, it did nothing to discourage underage drinking, it just gave a sort of Prohibition-era zest to the shenanigans of getting hold of it. I've never heard that it puts a dent in fraternities.

Neighbours are reluctant to call out the police, but since that's the only enforcement there is, we are gradually coming round to the idea.

Good luck.

[cmcmck]

I trust the police actually got off their chuffs on this occasion?

[shewhomust]

Well, who knows? They don't report back to the complainant. It did eventually stop, but by now it was morning, so...

I heard later than another neighbour had alreasy called in a complaint at 3 am, and that had no noticable effect!

[nineweaving]

This is why Oxbridge rejected you, why nobody except the other ---- likes you, and why you will die unloved after a lonely, divorced old age.

Now that's what I call a malediction!

I hope they shut the bleep up henceforth. Even better, I hope a sudden power surge fuses their amps. Permanently.

And may they never prosper and may they never thrive
On that they put their hands to as long as they're alive!
May the very ground they tread upon the grass refuse to bloom...

Nine

Nine

[shewhomust]

Nice!

And yes, actual shouting I'm used to, it's the 'music' that drives me crazy!