[thechat] DJing the neighbours into submission

[Martin Burns]

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On 6 Jun 2004, at 17:44, William Anderson wrote:

> Martin Burns wrote:
>> [snip]
>> Dunno about your laws down in Englandshire, but here, we've got quite 
>> useful legislation to cope with this. In our old place we got our 
>> downstairs neighbours' stereos confiscated by Lothian & Borders' 
>> finest one New Year's Day.
>
> Spoilsport :)

Fuller story

We used to live in quite a nice part of Embra, where one wouldn't 
expect late loud music (if we were in, say, Marchmont, then it would 
have been considered a self-inflicted injury :-) ). Then, shortly 
before Morgan was born, our downstairs neighbours let out their flat to 
a bunch of student wankers, who were of the habit of coming in at just 
after midnight, and playing *super* loud, crap music, and shouting over 
it. Tiresome to say the least, especially when you're working in the 
morning, and you have a young baby in the house who's not great  at 
sleep at the best of times.

Plus our old place was the upper storey conversion of a house, and 
sound travelled up the chimneys really well.

After several months of this, we eventually reached an understanding 
whereby they understood the limits of acceptability and all were happy.

Or so we thought.

Roll on Hogmanay. Now while they didn't warn us of the impending party, 
having a Hogmanay party is not unreasonable. Having it go on until 1 in 
the morning would have been fine. But no. The party went on with LOUD 
music in all the rooms until 1. Then 2. At 3, the band started in one 
of the rooms (while LOUD music and shouting continued in the others), 
playing really low quality, shouty covers of Wild Thing and similar 
loud songs.

Obviously there was no point in phoning the polis at that point, so we 
just stayed awake to the additional soundtrack of Morgan crying.

The next day, the music continued, and Lucy (who wasn't very well 
anyway) retired to bed. Then in the mid afternoon, the volume started 
going up - obviously on the upswing for another night. So at that point 
we called the cops, who sent round 2 very pissed off constables who'd 
been on duty the night before in the city centre, and had *had* it with 
celebrating drunks. Lucy rather enjoyed having the 2 burly guys in 
uniform in her bedroom...

So they discussed matters for about 5 minutes, deciding whether to just 
confiscate all the sound systems in the house, or to arrest the people 
as well. In the end, they just confiscated everything and held onto it 
for a month. Ahhhhh.

Once they got it back, we had about another month of respite before it 
started again. So we took to phoning their landlords whenever it was 
excessive. It didn't take *too* many calls at 2am before they got the 
message, and evicted them.

Cheers
Martin
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