When you change apartments, unless moving well up-market, the odds are that your new place will be better in those aspects that bugged you about the old place, but worse in aspects you never considered, until they force themselves on your attention.
My Muntazah apartment faced South-West, so it used to get very hot in the afternoon. It fronted a main road, with its attendant traffic noise, night and day. So, of course, my Bin Mahmoud apartment looks North-East, over a lo-rise roofscape, cool and silent.
Silent, that is, except when the people in the floor above have their AC running. Then, the drips from their window unit land squarely on the projecting box of my unit directly below, playing on its flat top plate like a child's tin drum. Inside, the noise is more akin to a demented metronome. The clicks start
Largo about 45 beats per minute (
con rubato of course - this is no mere drum machine), but soon settle into a gradual yet resolute
accelerando: from
Adagio, through
Andante, to
Allegro, where they seem to stabilise for a time, before the grand finale,
Presto con fuoco as the drip tray discharges its overload in a spontaneous but short-lived natural siphon (isn't Fluid Dynamics wonderful?) This, of course, heralds a break in the performance while the watery maestros regroup, to start the reprise,
Da Capo al Fine.
At least the drains work.
Stick a plant on it - the plant will muffle the sound and you wonlt have to remember to water it!
ReplyDeleteThat's the idea, Susan, but there's no access to it from inside, and from outside I'd need a very long ladder. I'm working on it :)
ReplyDeletedangle a small flexible child by the ankles from the upstairs flat?
ReplyDeleteOK, maybe not. Unless the child makes too much noise too!
Ah, the Michael Jackson solution - good thought!
ReplyDelete