An amalgamate group of overseas students has taken up residence in the house next door recently vacated by Mr Bald and his legion of small, yappy dogs. None of us are quite sure exactly how many of them there are living in the four-bedroom house, but we’re betting on at least seven judging by the pile of shoes inside the front door and sleeping mats sprawled behind the living room windows. (Yeah, they don’t even have proper beds, but there are always at least two sexed-up blinging cars in the garage at any one time. Ah, student life. Gotta love it.) I see them going in and out of the house all the time but they all dress the same and have identical layered/dyed/permed hair so I really can’t tell them apart. I briefly toyed with the idea of baking a batch of choc-fudge brownies and using the Welcome Wagon pretense to nose around but a) my Betty Homemaker impression is slightly out of whack seeing as I’m under twenty and unmarried, b) this isn’t the 1950s and c) I got lazy and couldn’t be arsed. I guess it’s still not too late to roll the Wagon around but it would be kind of weird now. (“Hi, I’ve been living next to you for the last… er, three months, but hey, welcome to the neighbourhood! Choc-fudge brownie?”)

At first I was apprehensive about how the late night shenanigans would affect my beauty sleep – frat party, anyone? But I soon realised that a drunken rowdy party next door may not necessarily be a bad thing. Besides, if things got really interesting I could just crash the place. (“Bye mum, just taking out the rubbish. See you in three hours!”) Alas, it was not to be, as the students are quite frankly really boring in the par-tay department or they just take their drunken rowdy shenanigans elsewhere. I can see into their house very clearly from a semi-ajar bathroom window, which kind of scares me, as logic goes they should probably be able to see into our house quite clearly as well. Our BATHROOM, mind you. And that’s not a comforting thought. Anyway, most times when the lights are on I see someone or other bent over their laptop on the floor. Which must mean they’re really studious and not party inclined. Or looking at porn.

It seems as if our whole neighbourhood is being taken over by bohemian student share-house types. Peering into the front window a few houses down, you will find a mouldering sofa in a dubious shade of yellow-brown, surrounded by mysterious jumbo pieces of cardboard that appear to mutate and breed as I swear the piles have grown every time I go past the house. Closer to home, our neighbours on the other side sport a variety of piercings in awkward places and they must be attempting to start a rock band or learn to play the drums or SOMETHING as very, very loud and obscure rock music has a habit of blasting from the garage at sporadic intervals until someone from the main house yells at them to shut up. Once again, the faces are interchangeable and the number of people living there varies. My bedroom window overlooks their backyard and it’s always interesting seeing random people wandering in and out, having never seen them in the house before and not knowing who the hell they are.

The strange thing is, they never get up to any funny business either. In fact, the only house that ever sees any action seems to be the rich dude who lives across the street with his mail-order bride from which bad Vietnamese karaoke music wafts down the street every Thursday night at 9 p.m. like clockwork. It’s really painful too – the songs have no beat, no rhythm and definitely no tune and drone on indefatigably until I feel like pulling out all my hair, strand by single strand. Nevertheless, I can almost deal with that as they are also the neighbours most likely to launch into a flaming argument about how all she does is spend his money or how he never appreciates her. This may often evolve into dish-throwing and door-slamming and as terrible as it may be, we all love a good spectacle. Yours truly included. God, life would be so boring without the lot of them.

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