Expect the unexpected

In the summer, things could get quite loud, but thankfully young kids go to bed early and so in the evenings a blessed silence descended. We lived in harmony with the playground – until, that is, a family with two young girls moved into the building. This pair of twins might have looked angelic, but had the unfortunate habit of making every nuance of their emotional states known to everyone through their screaming. These weren’t the normal loud yelps and squawks that children make, but something more akin to the soundtrack of a horror movie that would infect your brain and reverberate around your head like the death throes of a mastodon being butchered, before turning into loud-pitched squeals of a frequency that could shatter reinforced glass. The first time we heard these sounds from hell was during Sunday lunch. It turned us all to stone. No one could move for a good few seconds. The first to come out of this stupor was the dog, which, howling in fear, ran out onto the