Noises in the night

[shewhomust]

I was woken early yesterday morning by a smoke alarm. As usual, what had triggered the alarm was that its battery was running out, so the situation wasn't particularly alarming. I went back to bed, and dozed through the morning's news.

Yesterday afternoon we were visited by students bearing chocolate, and a hand-written message: two adjacent households were planning a party that evening, they hoped we would not be disturbed by noise, but if we were, here was a phone contact: please ring them, not the police. It's a bit patronising, isn't it? But a message does seem to have got through to the student population about noisy parties - not precisely the message residents would have chosen to send, but it's better than nothing: that they can do as they please, so long as the noise stops at eleven o'clock. There's always an anxious moment as eleven ticks past: will this one be an all-nighter? As I was preparing for bed last night, the noise from the back gardens was as loud as ever - no, louder, were they setting up amplification? And apparently they were, but only so that, as the magic hour passed they could announce - well, I don't know what they announced, but it worked. Within half an hour, all was quiet.

In the middle of the night, someone rang the doorbell. I don't know exactly what the time was: it was dark, I was half asleep. If I'd been more awake, I might have thought twice before answering it. It was a very well-spoken young man, looking for - well, I won't publish her name. She doesn't live here, I told him. What number are you looking for? He didn't know her house number, just that it was around here somewhere. "I hope in the morning you'll have forgotten all about this," he said, as he left. In retrospect it occurs to me that even if you assume that every house in the area is occupied by students, it was still too late to go knocking on doors at random, but at the time he didn't strike me as other than entirely sober.

Anyway, that's three. So I'm hoping for a quiet night tonight. Then next weekend we have fireworks to contend with.

Comments

[boybear]

..our fireworks have already started..

[shewhomust]

Twirly!

[athenais]

I don't think the student message sounds patronizing. I think it sounds hopeful that you can both work something out rather than involving the police, always a better choice in my opinion. But in any case it seems to have worked out okay. Although the guy at midnight, good grief.

Coincidentally, last night our smoke alarm set itself off for no reason we could determine (certainly not smoke) so we just made it stop and went back to eating dinner. Better then than later in the evening.

[shewhomust]

It wasn't so much the message I thought was patronising as the chocolate! And of course you're right that so long as they do keep things within reason, that's better than having to call the police - though there is a dedicated police team for dealing with student issues, so it's not as if we were bringing in the riot squad.

Our smoke alarm usually goes off in the small hours: durham_rambler says it's because the battery is less efficient when it's cold. So nearly seven o'clock, as it was this time, is quite civilised!