Like all self-obsessives, I hide behind the belief that people offend me constantly but that I never have any adverse impact on them. I rely for internal security on the fact that I am disturbed, I do not do the disturbing.
It was profoundly shocking, therefore, to come home the other night and be pottering about my bedroom talking to the house rabbit when the upstairs neighbours pounded on the floor. Even BB, who is generally fearless, being the size of a King Charles spaniel, stopped chewing on a coathanger to stand on his back legs and sniff at the ceiling. What the hell was going on?
I popped a note through the door inquiring about the banging. Was I to take it from the stamping of feet that I am to refrain from conversing with the lagomorph after a certain hour? If so, I do not think this sustainable as the rabbit likes conversation in the evening. He waits for me to get home and when I come through the door bounds towards me, then hops around the flat after me making a grunting sound until I sit down and tell him about my day.
I got a note back minutes later. Apparently when I come home late at night I wake everyone in the flat upstairs…by walking around. This is devastating on so many levels that I do not know where to start. As documented here, I’ve made varied complaints about the tenants upstairs sending me out of my mind by doing all sorts of things on their bare floorboards. It had, I confess, never occurred to me that my footsteps might be disturbing them. As I have never, to my knowledge, walked on my ceiling I struggle to understand how this might be so.
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