Besotted granny

A woman opposite our place has moved out. She was a lesbian, and caused little trouble to her neighbours, except for the occasional fiery argument with her girlfriend, when objects would get thrown. On the whole, though, she kept to herself and was no problem.

Now, a couple are about to move in. The condo managers assure me they are childless. Thank God.

For the last week they have hired a contracting couple to come in and fix their room. They put down new floor tiles, and painted the place out.

The couple brought with them their two pre-school age children. For a week, they caused little trouble. Then today, on their last day, we had a spot of bother.

On our side of the hallway, I have had problems with noisy neighbours on both sides of our room.

I solved the problem on one side, caused by a noisy air conditioner, when the office, on my behalf, persuaded the owners to move the thing further away from a shared wall.

On the other side, problems with a noisy Chinese family persist. The household comprises two sisters of working age, a grandmother, and a young boy. They actually rent two rooms: one next to ours, and the second room not far away, on the other side of the hall.

They get occasional visits from a working-age male, who speaks Chinese, wears a stern look, and is the boy's father, by the elder of the two sisters.

The younger sister is also now pregnant. Boyfriend Maiyuu suspects Mr Stern takes both women to bed, as we have never seen the younger one with another man.

We recall the days before the child, Granny, or her son Mr Stern arrived, when the sisters lived together in the room next to ours. They would have the most ferocious arguments - over the same man.

We suspect it is Mr Stern, who, in the interests of fairness, has decided it is now the younger one's turn to get pregnant. She has just two months to go before term, the office manager tells me. That means we can look forward to another screaming child arriving soon.

I dislike all of them, because they make noise without any consideration for their neighbours. But worst of all is the grandmother, who entertains the boy during the day while the mother is at work.

She is the indulgent sort - the kind of grandmother who hankers for the days when she was a parent, and just can't get enough of children's company. If the child wants to run up and down the hall screaming, she'll let it. If it wants to hop on its bike and charge up and down, banging into the walls and waking up the neighbours, she'll laugh and encourage its antics.

She's an adult without any identity of her own, as she's subsumed everything into this ghastly child, who ends up spoilt, over-indulged, and poorly behaved as a result.

This boy is not yet five. It hardly talks, and I doubt it has much, if any Thai, as the grandmother talks to it only in Chinese.

The couple hired to fix the room opposite are raising a young boy and girl, who look as if they are close to school age. The girl talks to herself, reciting everything her mother has ever told her, as a long unpunctuated stream of words which goes on forever. She barely takes a breath. 'Don't do this...don't think you can do that...' she says.

This morning the Chinese grandmother took over her nephew, Tinkly Bells (they put tinkly bells on the boy's ankles) to play with the pair.

The Thai boy and girl opposite were not impressed.

The boy pushed over Tinkly Bells a couple of times. Her sister held him back - not to restrain her brother, but because she, too, didn't like the look of Tinkly Bells.

I watched this little encounter through the peep-hole in my door, amid growing concern about the rising noise levels. The parents, who were busy laying tiles, left the kids to entertain themselves.

Together, they may not have posed much of a problem. But playing in a trio with Tinkly Bells? Oops...make that a foursome. With Tinkly Bells and Granny.

Half an hour alter, the noise outside had reached ear-splitting levels. The kids, in fact, were screaming.

If I can longer concentrate on what I am doing, and can think only of fleeing the condo for some quieter spot outdoors, then I know the time is come when I have to step in. I will not be driven from my own home.

I charged out the door. What did I find? Surprise, surprise. The grandmother was playing in the hall with the tilelayers' children, Tinkly Bells, and a small push-bike. She just can't leave the kids alone. Granny has to be in on the action, too, and by the looks of the wide smile on her face, she was having a great time.

'Go back to the room!' I bellowed at the tilelayers' kids. They looked at me, and obediently, left.

Then I turned on the grandmother.

'Why don't you take the kids up on to the roof to play?' I shouted.

She muttered something in Chinese. I mimicked her.

'Take them upstairs if you must play - and stop annoying other people!' I shouted.

'Yes...yes,' she appeared to agree.

I marched back home. As I closed the door, I saw the tilelayers looking at me.

Later, I went down to talk to the office. The manager assured me they were here just to fix the room, and that the couple who hired them have no children.

'I used to go out at night. I stopped that, because I was missing sleep. They start their noise at 8 in the morning,' I said.

In my view, tenants with families should be put on the same floor. Then, noisy children and their besotted grandparents can entertain each other to their hearts' content, while the rest of us get some peace.