Dene Street Gardens

My next door neighbours when I lived in Dene Street Gardens were more of an occasional irritant than a nightmare. In fact I'm probably more of the nightmare neighbour in this particular instance, but on this one occasion (it was the Sunday night of a bank holiday weekend) by about 3am, I had completely had enough of not being able to sleep due to the loud music.

I lost it.

Got myself dressed, pulled on my Doctor Martins, stormed out the front door walking down one side of the alley, stomped back up the other side and executed (what my tired mind had fully intended to be) a loud rap on the window.

Removing my hand from the broken glass (the large hole through which I was now peering) revealing two white-faced occupants frozen - holding an LP near a stacking stereo system in the living room. After a moment's refection I found my prepared speech to be probably inappropriate, switching instead to a hastily prepared profound apology for damage of property and a sincere assurance that I would get a glazier to attend the very next day and then hastily bid my neighbours a pleasant evening before vanishing back to my house and bedroom.

The one blessing was that, even though I didn't actually ask, they did seem to think it appropriate to turn the music down after my surprisingly noisy introduction to their living room. The price of silence was somewhere in the region of £115 (thanks to it being a bank holiday) to get their kitchen door fixed on the Monday, and the next weekend I was still muttering admonishments to myself as I headed down to the kitchen to cook breakfast (I had totally avoided all contact with the neighbours after that).

Outside my kitchen door, as I retrieved my newspaper, milk and orange juice from the window sill, two chaps in casual dress (hoodies etc.) were wandering up my garden path - I greeted them with cautious suspicion. They flashed ID badges and announced themselves to be police detectives, asking if I had noticed anything unusual the night before (I hadn't) then they told me my neighbour had been found dead (suddenly I'm seeing myself in a police line up, the putty being still wet around the newly fixed window about 8 feet away on the opposite house) from the altercation of the week before.

It turned out he died of a heroin overdose sometime during the week and they weren't looking for anyone in connection to the death.

Felt thoroughly rotten and deflated after that, our little incident meant I was probably one of the last people to ever see him alive.