Entre Les Murs

Peaceful Sunday Morning

I accept that living in an apartment in a big city places one uncomfortably close to one's neighbours. I'm sure we ourselves probably obliviously offend our neighbours from time to time without any idea we're doing so. You just have to be tolerant and remember that there's a price to pay for living in the big city. The parties are, after all, just kids doing their thing; the folks upstairs may have reasons for preferring to wear hard-soled shoes in the house; and we ought to be be grateful that the piano downstairs isn't an electric guitar or drums.

Still, would it seem really crabby were I to wonder what the hell the city was doing cleaning the streets at six o'clock on a Sunday morning? We were woken this morning by an air-raid-siren wail of machinery parked at the end of the block. It was a high-pitched motor noise going on and on with little dips in tone, like a wood-chipper. It makes you think just for a second that maybe someone has finally shut it down, but then it spins back up full bore. I looked out the window to see the thing in a big green truck with yellow caution lights. It was accompanied by men with rakes walking between the parked cars. Nice that Paris takes so much care with street-cleaning - but before the faintest glimmer of dawn on a Sunday? We popped in the earplugs again to get back to sleep.

posted 10.12.06