mostly david ephgrave

I'd have liked the guy shouting Rick Astley's 'Please Don't Go' at the top of his voice whilst decorating the flat next door me today to go himself, if given the choice. It’s not uncommon for people to moan about noisy neighbours, but this was the limit. The guy wasn’t singing, he was yelling, and he wasn’t shy about it either; he didn’t care that he was subjecting anyone within a two-mile radius to unconsenting Astley, or that he sounded atonal and unpleasant; he wanted the listener to know he was begging them to stay. I hope there's no truth to the Stone Tape theory that some rooms store traumatic events and then replay them when the conditions are right as, if so, a future tenant could be subjected to close-encounter Eighties pop on a wet Spring day. Even Rick’s biggest fan wouldn’t want to hear his songs that loud, even if Astley himself was doing the decorating; to paraphrase one of his other hits, I thought he'd never give up. Hopefully th...

When I visited my dad's house today, I made the executive decision not to sit on the noisiest chair. Most people don't own a seat that's noticeably more audible than the rest, with the exception of CJ in the Seventies sitcom 'The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin', but he's less relevant on account of being a fictional character who was played by an actor who's long dead; he didn't get where he is today without shuffling off of this mortal coil. My Dad, however, does. It lulls you into a false sense of security by 'sitting' next to another one that's identical in every way, save the silence. It's leathery, Mastermind-style opulence has no aural accompaniment. Meanwhile, the noisy chair does everything it can to lower your status; creaking and farting practically every moment you're on it, irrespective of how little or often you move. It's the most sensitive and volatile surface on the planet: capable of picking up the subtlest bu...