A Day in the Hood

A Typical 24 hours in our neighbourhood:

4.30am – Lazy, our cat, wakes us up for food

5am – the cockerels commence, and start the dogs off. The cockerels sing at dawn only. The dogs will go on all day.

6am – neighbours are up, washing dishes, clanking plates, outside before the sun is too hot. TVs are turned on and turned up

7am to 11pm – visitors. Unannounced, unexpected, they open your front door (when it's closed) and wander in (in our case, straight into our bedroom). If the front gate is locked they’ll shout. Our nephew recently hopped over the 2.5m high locked gate at 11pm to say hi. Not receiving visitors is not an option. Subtle hints like a locked gate and lights out are not taken, regardless of the hour.

8am – many people are at work so it’s a bit quieter. But it’s too hot to sleep. And a lot of people are not at work. Now is the time for the unoccupied to sit on the pavement and talk and listen to the radio. Also around 8am the advertising cars start rolling past – car’s kitted out with hewmungous speakers on the top crawl around the neighbourhood advertising various products.

10am – people start to prepare lunch. Cue banging of pans, bashing of garlic. Too hot and noisy to sit outside to read, study, chill. I stay inside hugging the fan. During rare moments of silence I enjoy the rich birdsong.

12pm – people arrive home for lunch. More conversation, radio turned waaaaaaaaay up.

6pm – people arrive home after work. Visitor numbers increase. Car stereos are left on and turned up. There is no scheduled finish time for car stereos.

10pm – the polite visitors tend to drift off home, minutes before further visitors arrive. The police start doing their evening rounds - driving round the neighbourhood turning the sirens on and off.

11pm to 12am – the last of the visitors leave, or are kicked out when they don’t pick up on my subtle hints like showering, brushing teeth and getting into bed.

12am  - the car stereos usually start to decline around midnight, but often go on throughout the night.

1am – some form of sleep is achieved.