Neighbours

I have excellent neighbours in Schoze, living as I do a mere fifteen minutes bus ride from the centre of Tirana. There are a whole host of excellent teenagers who want to practise their English, and younger children who tend to play outside with various games they make up themselves. This usually involves finding a rock with a chalky substance inside and scrawling patterns on the tarmac. These can often end up as makeshift goals or hopscotch grids.

One set of families which I hadn’t met so far were some of the nearest ones to my house. They arrived back home yesterday in party mood. This was a Tuesday night, so not the usual evening for a big celebration. Football was taking place in Spain with Barcelona winning again, but surely not enough to spark any party. Another well-supported team, AC Milan, weren’t in action until 24 hours later and their early season form has been pretty appalling. Mario Barlotelli could be the reason??

So what was it that caused (beautiful) Turkish music to be blasted to the neighbourhood from 8 until after midnight? To be honest, I have absolutely no idea. The interesting thing was that no one else seemed to mind. There appeared to be no attempts to inquire whether they could lower the volume or quieten down a few decibels. This morning as I left my home at 6.20 all was quiet. Birds, starved of sleep were having a lie in, roosters were bleary eyed and cats were doing what they always do..napping (average sleep needed per cat is 17 hours a day). I conjured with the thought of blasting my neighbours with a World Service programme on the Iraq War (part three of four this week...it is very good).  But, I reckoned that if your neighbours  are having a celebration they must be happy. So I left for school content in the knowledge that my nearest neighbours were cheerful, if not a little deaf.