The sound of rage

Every day, like an angry alarm clock, a woman starts yelling at six in the morning. It's not clear what she's yelling, but it seems to be two syllables, barked out over and over again. Eventually (usually by eight) she'll stop, and then the men who are destroying the paving stones beneath our flat will start drilling.

I suppose it's quite good that we have this possibly disturbed person, shouting the same phrase over and over again. It means that even if I forget to put my alarm on, I'll get woken up. Plus, perhaps it will inspire me to learn Chinese, so I can figure out what she's shouting. Although the joke will be on me if it turns out the invisible yeller is actually saying something in Malay. Again and again and again.

It didn't feel like a good thing this morning. Shouting commenced at six, regular as clockwork, but since I was probably still shitfaced until around nine, I didn't need waking up. I needed an intravenous drip of sugar water, and for somebody to rub the back of my neck and tell me everything would be ok. Not to have somebody shouting the same (possibly meaningless) phrase over and over again.

She must have very powerful lungs to project her voice so, because we're right at the top of the building and sound seems to travel down better than it does up. Perhaps when I find her, I can compliment her on her abilities.

Perhaps not.

I crawled out of bed, drank water, went back to sleep and didn't surface properly until 9am, when I had to go to work, a flaccid, exhausted shadow of my normal self. At least I didn't throw up in a wastepaper basket.

I was quite pleased that the flat wasn't trashed; I have so little trust in my subconscious that I expect to wake and find my id has put a chair through the screen of our television "for a laugh" and then smashed every container of food into the washing machine. Perhaps I broke into the shouter's flat and did it there, then went to bed and forgot about it, and that's why she's so cross. That's a rational explanation, surely.

The fun never returned to the world today, and so we had a quiet night in and tried not to think or talk or breathe too much. Perhaps that counts as a good rest before tomorrow's race. Perhaps.