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The Second Shoe

Update - September 2003 (Part One)

A friend told me a story the other day - I hope he'll forgive me for repeating it here. A couple took a lodger into their house. The lodger stayed out until late every night, returning after the couple had gone to bed. After he let himself in, he took his shoes off and threw them down on the floor, one after the other.

Thump, thump.

Every night, the couple were woken by the sound. Eventually, the couple mentioned to the lodger that this was disturbing them, and the lodger apologised and promised not to do it again.

After that, whenever the lodger came into the house late at night, he took off his shoes, threw one down - thump - and then remembered the couple's request. He carefully put down the second shoe without a sound. Upstairs, the couple were woken by the first thump, and lay tense for hours in anticipation of a second thump that never came.

We get conditioned. Sometimes, expecting something is a bigger problem than the thing itself.

The observant among you will have noticed that it's been several months since my last update - and now, like buses, two come along at once. I decided to do two updates because I want to keep the subject of this update separate from the subject of the other. I was unsure what I would say about my recent experiences - part of me would like to forget about them, but another part wants to tell everyone and yell and rave. I suppose that second part is winning.

So, briefly - for the last six weeks I have been, in effect, homeless. I don't mean that I somehow lost my home - it is still there, and I am still paying the mortgage; I just can't live there any more. I now live in a rented flat, and am trying to sell my house.

How did this come about? I was forced out of my home by anti-social neighbours. This wasn't a sudden occurrence - the situation had been deteriorating for several months, with a slow drip-drip effect that seemed bearable for a period. We can get used to a lot of things, if they develop gradually enough.

The biggest problem was music so loud that the bass made my entire house vibrate. I couldn't hear anything in my own house; music, tv, radio, my own thoughts. My heartbeat regulated to the beat of their music. My bed shook if I tried to sleep through it, even when I tried sleeping in the attic, two floors above their stereo. The music started at 8.30 am and regularly continued until midnight, and a couple of times right through to 5.30 am. Music this loud was a daily occurrence - and on the rare occasions when they were quiet, I was like the couple anticipating the lodger's second shoe, waiting for the noise to start up.

Music was not the only problem, though. My neighbours were dealing drugs from their house, and a stream of customers would pull up outside with car stereos at full blast, then bang on my neighbours' front door and yell at the windows at all hours of the day and throughout the night.

Gangs of a dozen or more youths would sit on my windowsill drinking beer, smoking spliff, shouting and arguing. When I got tired of this and asked them to move, they threatened to come back later and burgle my house. My tv aerial wire was cut and the NTL cable box was smashed. Their dog ran wild through the back yards, ripping my washing off the line. (It's almost a joke - 'the dog ate my bedsheets' - I just wish I could think of an occasion to use such a line!) Rubbish was piled up against my back gate so that I couldn't get into my garden. Empty beer cans and cigarette ends were dumped in my yard.

These are just a few of the things I put up with. On their own, they are annoyances - taken as daily occurrences without respite, they overshadow everything. I was trying to write, but the neighbours destroyed my concentration, destroyed my peace, destroyed my control over my own life. My routine was dictated by them; I slept when they turned their music off, got up when the music came back on. I tried to write in quiet periods, but all the time my heart was hammering as I waited for the peace to be shattered. I was afraid to go out into the street when there were gangs of young men around, but I felt bullied and intimidated when I stayed in the house. My life ceased to be my own.

You would be justified in asking why I didn't report the situation to the council, or to the police. I did as much as I was able to. The council wrote letters and sent people round - and the neighbours came straight to my door, furious, telling me they didn't want to fall out with me. And I didn't want them to fall out with me, either - who would? However they intended their comments, they felt like a threat.

The end came when my neighbours were raided by the police and arrested for drug dealing. Not the end for them - the end for me. They were bailed and sent home again, and they turned the music up louder than ever, so loud I was forced to go round and ask them to turn it down because my pipes were vibrating and my cat was terrified. They blamed me for the police raid. They shouted and raved and swore at me and slammed the door in my face. The music was turned up even further. I could hear them yelling and raving inside their house. I felt very isolated, very vulnerable - and where could I go for help?

I did the only thing I could think of. I left. I went to a café in the city centre, hoping it would calm me down, but I realised I just couldn't face going back. I had no idea what was going to happen. I knew I wouldn't be able to relax enough to sleep, even if their music was quiet enough to permit it. I was so tired - weeks of disruption had destroyed my sleep patterns. But most of all - something I couldn't admit even to myself at the time - I was very very frightened.

So I didn't go back, not often, anyway. I stayed with friends - a cycle of sleeping in friend's spare rooms and on floors and anywhere I could. I stayed in a hotel for a few nights. I risked the odd night at my house, but the noise was just unbearable and I couldn't ever relax. I felt physically sick when I approached my street. There was nobody I could turn to for help - who could I report them to without the situation becoming worse?

In effect, I became homeless.

Being homeless is a strange experience. Days, hours, minutes even, drag by. At every moment, you are faced with the simple fact that you have no space to occupy. Every moment involves a choice about where to be, and that constant choosing is a reminder that you have no place of your own. The situation saps the strength from your body, from your mind.

I spent a lot of time sitting in the local arts cinema café, drinking diet coke and reading, trying to distract myself. I read a huge number of books. I tried to block out the real world by reading, but whenever I neared the end of a book the panic rose up through me again - soon I would have to face the situation, soon I would have to do something about it.

My friends got me through. I have very good friends, every one of them ready to help out however they could. They gave me places to sleep in, a temporary office to finish a freelance contract, a temporary home for my cat. They helped me sort and redecorate my house to put it on the market. They gave me a second opinion on flats I went to see. At one point, I had the keys to five different houses in my pockets. Without my friends, I would have drowned.

Now, the worst is almost over. I have moved into a new flat, where the neighbours so far seem quiet and considerate. There are no gangs of youths, no drug dealers that I have seen, no loud music. I am surrounded by quiet. I can relax. It is only now that I am settling into my new place, looking forward to my cat's arrival, thinking about my next book, that I can see just how crippling the situation had become. It was a form of mental torture - the gradual stripping away of a person's autonomy, the erosion of self and control, the destruction of all sense of normality.

The friend who told me the story about the lodger's shoes also made another very valid comment. If a writer is going to write a novel that is compelling, interesting, exciting, gripping, he said, that writer needs to have a very stable, boring sort of life herself. I think he's right. Stable and boring may not be the public perception of a writer's life, but it's the best sort of life I can imagine right now.

The least helpful comment that I heard over and over during this experience was, 'Just think of all the research material'. I know the people who uttered this drivel meant well - and I know that at some point in the future I probably will use the experience in my fiction - but that doesn't help. Far from giving me extra material, being some sort of writerly 'bonus', a research jackpot, this experience has cost me months of time and energy, not to mention money, and the frustration of being unable to write for so long is still bubbling up inside me.

So this is fair warning - if anyone says the words, 'Just think of all the research material,' to me one more time, I may well not be responsible for my actions. If you are ever tempted to say something similarly bracing to someone in a difficult situation, my advice is - don't. Hold your tongue. Sometimes, silence is the thing we crave most of all.

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