Daysleeper
March 24, 2008 – 8:05 amOnce every few months, my job compells me to work a week of nightshifts. This I don’t particularly mind; I get to wear civvies, stop shaving and see how fast my chair’s wheels will carry me from one end of the empty office to the other. There is also very little that is more satisfying than riding the tube home at 6am, looking smugly at a carriage of commuters, and knowing that by the time they all clock in for the day’s anomie and wage-slavery I will be in my bed.
However, that’s where my problems begin. You see, I’d previously thought that the road I live on was very quiet. It’s in an unremarkable suburb of north London, and not much ever happens here; there are no bangin’ warehouse raves or Libertines-style guerilla gigs or mass lynchings of suspected paedophiles by vigilante mobs. Instead there are a lot of young families, pensioners and cats. If any of them go in for serial killing or converging around massive reggae soundsystems their double glazing stops me from knowing about it.
By night, at least. I’d never been around to work this out before, but during daylight hours the place fills up with a cacophony of background noise. Dogs being taken for walks bark at each other. Toddlers shriek and yell as their harrassed mums let the loose in their gardens. Bin lorries beep-beep-beep their way up the road. My bedroom is at the rear of the house, which you would think would be quiter. And at night, it is. But I’ve only just found out that it backs onto a street full of mechanics’ garages, clanking and whirring and vrooming during business hours enough to turn even Jeremy Clarkson into Swampy.
So I find myself trying to nod off just at the point where my neighbourhood comes alive. As my heavy eyelids fail to drop, I curse myself for failing to buy earplugs…
…And then remember that I don’t need them. I turn my good left ear to my pillow, leave the dead right one pointing unreceptively towards the din, and zonk out. Why did I ever think my tumour was in any way a bad thing?
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Being "corned beef" in only one ear, I think I should show solidarity with those who are bilaterally deaf. So I’m posting a link to a petition on the 10 Downing St website by started by a reader of this blog who wants all digital TV programmes to carry subtitles. I suggest you sign it if you’re a UK subject as it’s a good cause; more so than some of the other nonsense on the site, such as campaigns to replace the national anthem with ‘Gold’ by Spandau Ballet, honour the broadcaster James Whale with a Knighthood and allow the sale of elephants in pet shops (actually, I think I might put my name to that last one as well).
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- A 40-hour workweek? [A Blog Around The Clock]
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